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ECHO IN MY SOUL by

ECHO IN MY SOUL

By

Pub Date: Sept. 7th, 1962
Publisher: Dutton

This is the record of a life-time of struggle, defeat and accomplishment of a Negro teacher in South Carolina and Tennessee. From her first job on Johns' Island, off Charleston, where the Negro teachers were paid $25 a month, and the white teachers $85, this tells her story to the closing of Highlander Fold School in 1959 on trumped-up charges which included possession of liquor on the premises. It was an isolated school, inter-racial and therefore controversial. Mrs. Clark, a teetotaller herself (hence the irony of the charge), brave, ambitious, agitated for equality and progress and despite personal sorrows, never faltered in her dedication to the task of helping others. Unfortunately, there is an almost total lack of humor and emotional vividness; in fact she rather studiedly underplays her emotions as when she says she was ""deeply distressed"" at the death of her baby, and ""disconsolate"" when her husband dies. Too much irrelevant detail, is remembered and recorded, too little pertinent data that might personalize and enliven the picture.