Littleton Coin Company

Civil Rights Innovation Dollar

Civil Rights Innovation Dollar – Littleton Coin Company BlogImage courtesy of Highlander Research and Education Center via the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities

“Out of adversity comes opportunity,” our beloved founding father, Benjamin Franklin, once observed. The ground-breaking achievement of Septima P. Clark is proof that adage was still true in the 1950s and ’60s when she launched a novel program that linked literacy and civic engagement. In 2021, the U.S. Mint honored Clark for her groundbreaking curriculum on its Innovation dollar for South Carolina.

Come meet Mrs. Clark.

Born to Teach

Septima Poinsette was born in 1898 in Charleston to a former slave and a free woman from Haiti who wanted her seventh child to attend high school. Septima was graduated in 1916. After passing the teacher’s exam, she started educating children at an all-black school on John’s Island. It was their elders who asked Septima to show them how to read, write and do simple math.

At the close of WWI, she met a returning sailor, Nerie Clark, and married him. Moves to North Carolina and Ohio followed before Septima Clark returned to teach in the state capital, Columbia. Among other advantages, a better salary afforded her the opportunity to earn a teaching degree from a four-year school. She also attended interracial meetings, played bridge and joined the fledgling NAACP. At night school, she picked up what she had started on John’s Island, and taught working adults to read and write. In 1946 she earned a master’s degree from Hampton Institute in Virginia.

And then she returned to Charleston. In 1956 the state legislature passed a law prohibiting teachers from belonging to any civil rights organizations. When the Board of Education asked Mrs. Clark to keep her NAACP membership quiet – and she refused – it fired her. From that adversity came the opportunity to develop a civil rights curriculum.

Creation of Innovative Citizenship Schools

Moving to New Market, TN, Septima Clark became the workshops director at the then-named Highlander Folk School, a leadership training institute where she had taught in the summers. Her civil rights seminars included at least one notable student, Rosa Parks, six months before she would refuse to give up her seat on a public bus in Montgomery, AL.

Civil Rights Innovation Dollar – Littleton Coin Company BlogMembers of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference marching for change

Believing that “knowledge could empower marginalized groups in ways that formal legal equality couldn’t,” Mrs. Clark designed a course of study that demonstrated the link between literacy and citizenship. One of the cornerstones was teaching students to read and to understand the U.S. Constitution. The goal? To enable them to pass literacy tests required of black voters in order to vote.

Clark’s pioneering approach drew widespread interest. Ultimately the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta, GA took the Citizenship Schools under its administrative umbrella, overseeing an expansion to 897 citizenship schools by 1970.

When the U.S. Mint chose to honor Septima P. Clark on its Innovation dollar for South Carolina, it noted that civil rights youth workers and community organizers referred to her as “Mother Conscience”, while Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. referred to her as “The Mother of the Movement.”

In her 1986 autobiography Ready From Within, Clark wrote “…the Citizenship Schools made people aware of the political situation in their area.” A little further on she noted “…if you look at the black elected officials and the political leaders, you find people who had their first involvement in the training program of the Citizenship Schools.”

Other Women Civil Rights Crusaders Honored on Coins

In earlier articles for Heads & Tails, we showed how to create a heritage collection. We also explored how to assemble coins related to historic events such as the 1876 Centennial Exhibition. In a similar strategy, there’s opportunity to build a numismatic collection of American women honored for their Civil Rights crusades. Here are a few:

  • Maya Angelou – at the request of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., she served as northern coordinator of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She is honored on the first 2022 U.S. Women quarter.
  • Elizabeth Peratrovich – credited with helping to pass the Anti-Discrimination Law of 1945. A member of Alaska’s Tlingit Raven Moiety, she is honored on the 2020 Native American Dollar.
  • Helen Keller – advocated for women’s suffrage and disability rights, and co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union. She is honored on the 2003 Alabama Statehood quarter.
  • Susan B. Anthony – notably campaigned for women’s right to vote, but also crusaded against slavery and alcohol production. She is honored on the first small-sized dollar coin series, launched in 1979.
  • Harriet Tubman – slave-turned-abolitionist, she worked to end slavery and joined Anthony to push for women’s suffrage. She is exclusively honored by Littleton Coin on both a colorized coin and a colorized $2 Federal Reserve Note.

In the U.S. Mint’s Innovation dollar series, Septima Poinsette Clark and Annie Jump Cannon are the first women whose trail-blazing achievements have been recognized. The series runs through 2032. Do you have a favorite Innovation dollar that holds a special meaning for you?

This article was written by Helen P.

An adventurous time-traveler, Helen P. is an author of numerous regional history books.

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