Charron’s Civil Rights Book Honored

Dr. Katherine Mellen Charron’s book, Freedom’s Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark, was selected as the best book of South Carolina history published in the preceding calendar year.

South Carolina Historical Magazine honored the book with its 2010 George C. Rogers Jr. Book Award, which will be presented next month in Charleston. The book won the 2010 Julia Cherry Spruill Prize for best monograph from the Southern Association of Women Historians.

In the mid-1950s, Clark, a former public school teacher and civil rights leader, developed a citizenship training program that enabled thousands of African Americans to register to vote and become active in the community.

Charron, an assistant professor of history, holds a master’s in Afro-American studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a doctorate in history from Yale University.