Read to Exist

Before there were marches, there were classrooms. Before microphones, there were pencils. In this episode of When Women Walked, we explore the life and legacy of Septima Clark—the educator who helped build the intellectual foundation of the Civil Rights Movement. Through the Citizenship Schools developed at the Highlander Folk School, Clark taught thousands of Black Americans to read, write, and claim their constitutional rights in a system designed to deny them both literacy and citizenship. On National Reading Day, this episode asks a deeper question: what does it mean to read in a democracy where literacy itself has been used as a barrier to freedom? Drawing on scholarship from Ready from Within and Freedom’s Teacher, we examine how Clark’s classrooms helped prepare a generation of organizers and voters who would transform the American South. Because sometimes revolutions don’t begin with speeches. Sometimes they begin with learning how to sign your name.