[Reading-hall-of-fame] Re: SELMA:The March From Literacy to Voting Rights

Thu Jan 15 00:09:54 GMT 2015

Thanks for sharing this Tom
On 15 Jan 2015, at 7:15 am, tsticht at znet.com<mailto:tsticht at znet.com> wrote:

Celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on January 19th, 2015

1/12/2015

SELMA: The March From Literacy to Voting Rights

Tom Sticht, International Consultant in Adult Literacy

Promotional materials state that the 2014 movie, SELMA, “ is the story of a
movement. The film chronicles the tumultuous three-month period in 1965,
when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a dangerous campaign to secure equal
voting rights in the face of violent opposition. The epic march from Selma
to Montgomery culminated in President Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act
of 1965, one of the most significant victories for the civil rights
movement.”

The movie focuses on the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, the
violence and indignities the marchers encountered, and the interactions of
President Lyndon Johnson and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in bringing about
the Voting Rights Act of 1965.   Missing, however, are the activities of
thousands of African-American literacy teachers who taught illiterate
adults how to read and, most importantly at the time, how to write their
names so they could  meet the literacy requirements for voting across the
southern states.

Working with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC) and other civil rights groups from 1962 to
1966, Septima Poinsette Clark lead the Voter Registration Project that
subsequently prepared 10,000 teachers for citizenship schools where they
taught literacy within the functional context of voter registration.

Brown-Nagin (1999) reported that, "The most critical elements of the
citizenship program ...was that it was to be functional: [adults] learned
to read using state and federal constitutions, codes of law, sample
ballots, and other legal documents as ‘texts.’ ...citizenship school
instructors taught practical matters such as how to: make purchases from
mail order catalogues; utilize bank accounts; compute income tax; utilize
social security and disability benefits; and take care of the many other
affairs involved in functional adulthood" (p. 94). These efforts
eventually lead some 700,000 African-Americans to vote. (Clark, 1986,
p.70).

In 2000, writing about Clark, Michael Cary stated, “As newly literate black
voters tried to register, they encountered more barriers, like tests
without objective answers, the correctness of an answer depending on the
whim of the registrar. ...Responding to such procedural devices, Clark
participated in protests and in lobbying Washington to have these practices
stopped. Eventually, in 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, and the
federal government subsequently moved with a firm hand to end voting
discrimination in the South. ... Preparing for the next election in 1966,
Clark set up 150 Citizenship Schools in Selma, Alabama, from May 18 to
August 15, 1965, paying teachers $1.25 an hour for two hours of teaching
every weekday morning. They registered over 7,000, and the new voters soon
made themselves heard” (Cary, 2000).  By the time Clark retired from her
SCLC work in 1970 over a million African-Americans had registered to vote
in the south.” (Clark, 1986, p.70).

In 1964, in recognition of the role that she played in the civil rights
movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. insisted that Septima Poinsette Clark
accompany him to Norway where he received the Nobel Peace Prize. King
considered Septima Poinsette Clark the “Mother of the Movement.” As for
herself, Clark spoke about the role of literacy education and learning in
the civil rights movement and wrote: “How can anybody estimate the worth of
pride achieved, hope accomplished, faith affirmed, citizenship won? These
are intangible things but real nevertheless, solid and of inestimable
value" (Clark, 1962, p. 154).

In the U.S. presidential election of 2008, the “intangible” became
“tangible” thanks in large part to the march from literacy to the Voting
Rights Act of 1965.  In the 2008  Presidential election, 13 percent of the
voters were African-Americans  and some 96 percent exercised their right to
cast their vote for an African-American candidate who would go on to become
the first African-American President of the United States.

References

Ayres, D. (1988). Let my people learn: The biography of Dr. Wil Lou Gray.
Grenwood, SC: Attic Press.

Brown-Nagin, T. (1999). The transformation of a social movement into law?
The SCLC and NAACP’s campaigns for civil rights reconsidered in light of
the educational activism of Septima Clark. Women’s History Review, 8,
81-138.

Cary, M. (2000). Clark, Septima Poinsette (1898-1987. In: Anne Commire
(Ed.). Women in world history: A biographical encyclopedia. Vol. 3.,
Detroit: Yorkin Publications.

Clark, S.  (1962). Echo in my soul. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.

Clark, S. (1986). Ready from within: Septima Clark and the civil rights
movement. Navarro, CA: Wild Trees Press.

tsticht at aznet.net<http://aznet.net>

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