Septima P. Clark

Happy Black History Month! Here is a portrait I drew from my Interesting South Carolinians series of Septima Poinsette Clark:

Ciana Pullen, Portrait of Septima Poinsette Clark, 1898 - 1987. Charcoal on paper, drawn from several different photographs and based around 1965. [Image description: realistic black and white charcoal bust portrait of an older black woman holding a pencil in mid-thought and looking abstractly outside of the left picture frame. She wears silver-tipped black cat-eye glasses, a white shirt with popped lapels, and a dark jacket or cardigan with a large fold-over collar. Her natural salt-and-pepper hair is brushed back from her large forhead and hangs in wisps at the nape of her neck. She sits leaning into the image frame from the right edge, with her head in the middle-right of the upper half of the drawing, her hand holding the pencil loosely with a bent wrist in the lower left corner. Diffused natural light illuminates her from the left, as if through a window.]

“I have a great belief in the fact that whenever there is chaos, it creates wonderful thinking. I consider chaos a gift.”



Civil rights legend Septima Poinsette Clark (1898 – 1987) began as a teacher in a small African American school on Johns Island near Charleston, SC. Because she was black she was not allowed to teach in Charleston, but while teaching in Johns Island she developed ways of using everyday materials such as Sears catalogs to teach literacy.


Across from Clark's school was a white school, where only three students attended and the teacher made $85 per week. Meanwhile Clark was teaching principal for a school of 132 black students; she made $35 per week while the other two teachers made only $25. Galvanized by this discrimination she returned to Charleston to teach at the Avery Normal Institute, helping to win a legal victory for black people to have the right to become principals at Charleston's public schools in 1920. Clark continued to fight for equality for educators and was eventually fired because of her refusal to renounce membership with the NAACP, lost her pension and was black-balled from every school in the Charleston area. So threatened were other black educators with losing their jobs that they would not even be photographed with her.

After studying with W. E. B. du Bois Clark earned a bachelor's degree in 1945 and became involved with the Highlander Folk School in rural Monteagle, TN. There she put her innovative Johns Island teaching techniques to use conducting literacy workshops across the South. Because Jim Crow laws prevented illiterate citizens from voting, Clark's short 1- and 2-week courses were designed to be taught with minimal resources, often hidden in back rooms of shops because of the threat of racial violence, with the goal of passing voting literacy tests and setting foundations for communities to further their own learning. By 1969 Clark's program helped to register over 700,000 people to vote, including Rosa Parks just months before the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Clark became the first woman appointed a leadership position in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, but she would struggle with sexism from within the civil rights movement, speaking out against it and retiring from the organization in 1970. She then sued for back payment and pensions from her job with the Charleston Public School System and won, going on to serve two terms on the Charleston County School Board. She was awarded a Living Legacy Award by President Jimmy Carter in 1979.

The Avery Normal Institute where Clark once taught, 19th century and today, 125 Bull Street, Charleston, near MUSC. The institute itself was a landmark historic Black learning institute and later a center of activism. Today the Avery Institute is owned by the College of Charleston and functions as a museum, archive and research center for African American history and culture. photo via.

The site of Clark's home, now demolished, on Henrietta Street in Downtown Charleston, SC., next to Francis Marion Square. Coincidentally, I park my car here in the vendor's lot for the Charleston Farmer's Market, which is where I drew the portrait of Clark and sell prints of it, and never noticed the placard until I saw it online researching this post. via perservationsociety.org.

Septima Clark, via Charron & Cline, Southern Cultures. [Image description: Black and white photo of an older-middle-aged Clark in three-quarter profile, her head bowed and looking out of frame.]

Septima Clark with students in a literacy / voting workshop, via The Self-Rescuing Princess Society. [Image description: black and white snapshot of a group of older Black men and women sitting at a table looking at booklets with Clark sitting in the center speaking. They're in a plain old-fashioned room.]

Civil Rights figures (from left to right): Ms. Towles (I Googled but could find no information on this person), Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, Septima Poinsette Clark, and Annelle Ponder (a teacher at a Freedom School in Mississippi and local field secretary for the SCLC, via God's Long Summer by Charles Marsh). Photo from the Lowcountry Digital Library, via The Self-Rescuing Princess Society. [Image desciption: A black and white snapshot of the women described, all dressed in 1960s formal attire, standing in a line smiling.]

Portrait of Septima Clark, taken by Brian Lanker. The story of the photographer and this photo can be found via 37 Paddington. [Image description: Black and white artistic photo of Septima Clark's head and shoulders in profile. Her figure is lit brightly against a black background, her chin rests on the knuckle of the forefinger of her relaxed hand. She wears her white hair in three thin cornrow-type braids over her head stretching in U-shapes from ear to crown to ear, making for a clean-lined profile of her head. She appears serious with heavily lidded eyes peering down out of her upwardly tilted face, gazing straight ahead.]

A 2007 historical marker on Johns Island (a rural coastal island just outside Charleston, SC) about Clark and the Progressive Club, a civil rights era community center, via Gullah/Geechee Nation. Today you'll also see the Septima Clark Parkway running across Downtown Charleston from the bridge from West Ashley to the Ravenel Bridge to Mt. Pleasant. It's usually called "The Crosstown."

Ezra Jack Keats at the Contemporary Jewish Museum

I found out via Apartment Therapy that Ezra Jack Keats, the illustrator of Snowy Day, Peter's Chair and Whistle for Willie, will have a show of his illustrations at the Contemporary Jewish Museum.

An illustration from Ezra Jack Keats' The Snowy Day. [Image: an African American kid in a red snowsuit stands in a mound of snow in front of an orange, pink and yellow wall and stoplight. It has a mod 1950s jazzy collage look like West Side Story.]

In high school I interned with an ESL (English as a Second Language) class at my former elementary school and spent a lot of time reading aloud from my old favorites from the library. I appreciated The Snowy Day much more as an adult than as a kid, especially since I resented stories about winter as it never snowed much in my home town. I wonder if this book was part of the inspiration behind the Rhapsody in Blue cartoon in the new Fantasia?

Three stills from Disney's Fantasia's Rhapsody in Blue. [Image: cartoon men in front of cityscapes in monotone color pallets]

Critique

"OMG you are such... a good... drawler."
"Omg no, are you kidding me? Yours is so... much... better than mine."
"What? No! Seriously, yours looks really real."
"What-EVER. Mine looks like crap."
"No, MINE looks like crap."
"Mine looks like vomit."


That was my high school art class. At my all-girl's school, that was basically the only way to take and receive a compliment about your art. Trust me: nothing makes me more uncomfortable than these sorts of exchanges, so eventually I simply tried saying, "Thanks!" Wow, the looks I got. It's like I'd grabbed the complimenter by her collar, shaken her and screamed, "THAT'S RIGHT BITCH! TAKE THAT!!!!!!!!"

So I stuck to the script-- even when the other person's was not always so much better than mine. Or I came off as obligingly fake-modest, even when I was frustrated that mine really looked like crap. Or when I just wanted to be left the hell alone so I could draw. This was in the South, by the way-- there is no "being left alone," or opting out of the compliment competition. There is also no being straightforward and no rocking the boat.


Imagine, then, when my teacher decided to hold a critique. Get in a group, put the drawing up on the bulletin board, go around and say one good thing about it and make one "constructive criticism." No one vocalized anything, there was certainly no formalized plan; but there was an innate understanding, unanimous agreement. The first drawing went up on the board; it belonged to one of the bow-heads (if you're unfamiliar with this classic clique, they are not the Mean Girls, the uber-popular elite; they're not the nerds, either. They are well-liked, reasonably book-smart, well-adjusted, often religious, and they play team sports and volunteer with underprivileged kids after school. Typically wear pastel colored clothes and ponytails with ribbons tied in a bow around them.) The teacher could have selected an unpopular girl's piece and maybe someone would have come up with a criticism. Or maybe a popular mean queen's piece; people might have been ready to bring her down a notch. But she didn't.

"Bow-heads" volunteering in a team. My friend also named this clique, "Pastel People." I know it seems like I'm making fun of them but they were pretty cool-- I just couldn't relate to them at the time.

The first girl called upon started with the good: "It's really... pretty."
"Ok, good! It's pretty! Ok. So do you have any constructive criticism?"
Long silence. Finally,
"I can't."
"Oh, come on, you can think of something!"
"No I can't."
"It's perfect?"
Sigh. Eye roll. "I can't think of anything." The teacher takes a deep breath.
"Ok, let's go to someone else. Katie? Something good?"
"I agree it's pretty."
"Pretty how?"
"Like... I don't know."
"Come on."
"It's got like... nice colors."
"Ok! Nice colors! Yes! And what is your constructive criticism?"
Stony silence.
"Katie?"
Silence.
"Katie. Something."
Stonier silence.
"Anything."
"I can't."
"Katie--"
"I can't."

At this point I should mention that, while the drawing was fine-- I vaguely recall it being a landscape-- there was clearly room for improvement. We were high schoolers, not pros.


"Ok. Ladies. We are talking about constructive criticism here. Not a personal attack. Somebody needs to come up with one item of constructive criticism before this class is over." She surveyed the room and landed on another Katie, a teacher's pet.


Katie, like many sixteen-year-old Southern girls, aimed to please (and appease). She must have been genuinely torn between teacherly noncompliance and saying something bad about another girl. I probably would have been, too, as I was a goody-two-shoes, but thankfully she hadn't called on me.


Katie was silent. Her eyes darted back and forth, searching for help from the other girls. Everyone looked down.


"Katie!"

Publicity shot for the movie, "Mean Girls." [Image: the three main popular girls. The one on the right smiles at the camera, one stands slightly behind the middle girl making a smirking face, and the middle girl glances sideways at the smirking girl she cannot see, looking extremely uncomfortable.]

Katie took a deep breath and maintained her silence. She was the weak link but her decision to remain silent set the tone. By this point no one would speak, good or bad. There was literally nothing the teacher could do. She was powerless in the face of social pressure. She could have failed us all, but it was understood: you cannot say outright negative things about other girls in public to their faces.



Ten to fifteen minutes later the bell rang. The classroom was vacated in under thirty seconds.


Writing about art criticism reminded me of this incident. I've also been thinking recently about hosting a group critique, inviting some artists I like, since critiques were a favorite part of art school for me and I miss them like crazy. But then there is the memory of that one critique from high school (the teacher never tried to make us do this again). What if it devolves into girl-compliments and critique-fear? It would be absolute hell. But I'm still thinking about it....

What I Did On My Summer Vacation: Part 1

I went to Savannah, GA. I escaped this humid historic beach town on the marsh for another humid historic beach town on the marsh and I loved it! Actually I found Savannah surprisingly different from Charleston in that it felt more lived-in (less "preserved" than the Charleston Peninsula) and more socially liberal, probably because of all the SCAD kids.  God I was jealous of the SCAD kids. I'm not tossing that off lightly, I mean to say that jealousy of the SCAD kids almost ruined my vacation. There they were in a glorious beautiful town whereas I went to school in DC, an oppressive ball-sac of a city. They were kids in art school and I'm... well... an adult.

But I managed to have a great time with my lovely husband anyway. Savannah's got a great museum called the Telfair, which is actually three centers: the Jepson (contemporary art; folk art), the Telfair (historic Western art in a mansion, plus more folk art), and the Someone-or-Other House, a beautiful historic home from 1809 (I think) with slave quarters and service basement (the most interesting part of the tour). You buy a ticket that gets you into all three places once any time over the course of a week, a great system because there is so much to see.

[Image: the interior of the Jepson Center with white walls and sunlight streaming through the glass ceiling and creating a stripey effect on the walls that morpsa throughout the day depending on the light and weather.]

Jepson Center is an incredible building. I've seen a lot of big white minimalist museums in my time but this place was just big enough to be breathtaking but no bigger, white enough to be calming but not cold, and full of curves that created a soaring airy atmosphere without being hard to navigate. We unexpectedly spent the majority of our time messing around in the kid's educational section where my husband encountered an interactive music software table. Four measures of music bars are printed on the tabletop and you place wooden blocks where you want the beat to go. A thing above your head scans the bars repeatedly and plays the beats as you've arranged them in a loop in real time. You can scatter numerous beats across a measure and the tenor of the sound changes depending on where on the staff you place the block. It was addictive.

[Image: my husband hunched over a table playing with the music thing I described.]

There were plenty more well-designed absorbing stations in the kid's area that really got me thinking about how one should teach kids about art. When I was a kid a museum educational area always had some state-of-the-art interactive station involving computers which was always broken and roped off, leaving the museum with no other funds for further "exploration" except some dubious station involving filthy chip-board cut-out shapes with rounded child-safe edges that you arranged in order to "discover" some concept that no one really cared about. And a fiberglass mascot of the particular area of study that you could climb on. But not at the Jepson.

The staff also had an exhibit up outside the museum offices and I'm just going to say it: the staff show was better than the content of most galleries in Charleston. 

In one of the real galleries they were showing Betsy Cain: In Situ. She's a local artist who makes large abstract paintings by swirling acrylic paint over smooth surfaces with a squeegee. Oh man, they were gorgeous. Floor-to-ceiling huge, they were so big you really got a feeling for the way the painter's body moves as she applies the paint. Check out her work!

[Image: Betsy Cain, Indigofera #4. Vertical abstract composition with blackish indigo thick swirling marks smeared out or watered down to light indigo in some places on a white background. Lots of drips and visceral smearing.]