Bernice Robinson however engaged in little political involvement prior to her workshop attendance at Highlander. A North Charleston native, Robinson took part in the Great Migration and moved to New York City in 1932 where she attended Pace College for interior design and opened a beauty parlor, making her an entrepreneur. Septima Clark encouraged Robinson to attend a Highlander workshop upon her return to the South in 1951. After six years of training, Robinson became the first Citizenship School teacher on Johns Island, South Carolina where she taught African-American adults how to read and write in order to register to vote, as they were deprived of a formal education. The program expanded throughout the Coastal South because the initial Citizenship School received such acclaim and interest from surrounding African-American communities.
Following the expansion of the Citizenship School programs, Robinson was appointed as Director of the Highlander Folk School, the first woman and African-American individual to do so. Robinson continued to work in voter registration initiatives among African-American adults in the South and combined her efforts with Bob Moses who was spearheading Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) political endeavors at the time. Evidently there is a connection between the Citizenship Schools and the Freedom Registration Programs that were created for Freedom Summer; Bernice Robinson is the link that bridges the aforementioned political programs. This poster presentation will utilize visual representations of Bernice Robinson’s role in Freedom Summer, 1964 to show how Highlander was heavily involved in voter registration long before SNCC, the Congress Of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) were.