Q 01/05

Septima Clark's father was born enslaved on the plantation of Joel Poinsett, the first US minister to which country?

A) Spain

B) Mexico

C) Brazil

D) Cuba

Answer · why

B) Mexico

Mexico is where Joel Roberts Poinsett found the red-leaved plant now called the poinsettia and sent samples home. Peter Poinsette, Clark's father, was...

Q 02/05

Which activist took Septima Clark's 1955 workshop at Highlander Folk School months before making headlines in Alabama?

A) Fannie Lou Hamer

B) Coretta Scott King

C) Rosa Parks

D) Daisy Bates

Answer · why

C) Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks said Clark's teaching gave her courage. That December she kept her seat on a Montgomery bus, and a citywide boycott followed.

Q 03/05

Septima Clark lost her teaching job in 1956, after 40 years, for refusing to resign from which organization?

A) The NAACP

B) The Urban League

C) A teachers' union

D) The Elks lodge

Answer · why

A) The NAACP

The NAACP was the target of a 1956 South Carolina law barring city and state employees from civil rights groups. Clark refused to quit, and the dismis...

Q 04/05

When police raided Highlander Folk School in 1959, Septima Clark was arrested on which charge, later dropped?

A) Operating a lottery

B) Evading state taxes

C) Inciting a riot

D) Possessing whiskey

Answer · why

D) Possessing whiskey

Possessing whiskey was the charge, soon dropped as false. The raid interrupted an interracial workshop, and officials padlocked the school.

Q 05/05

Teaching at night on the Sea Islands, Septima Clark helped adults learn to read using which everyday publication?

A) Reader's Digest

B) The Farmers' Almanac

C) The Sears catalog

D) The Saturday Evening Post

Answer · why

C) The Sears catalog

The Sears catalog was one of the everyday materials she built her lessons around. Later classes practiced on voter registration forms, driver's licens...