Dorchester Cooperative Center played a key role in the struggle for civil rights and voting rights. In 1954, Septima Clarke, a school teacher from Charleston, South Carolina, and Esau Jenkins, a farmer and school bus driver from Johns Island, South Carolina, were at the forefront of grassroots efforts to make voter registration a reality. With support from the Highlander Folk School, they devised a plan to help rural adults pass literacy and citizenship tests, and the first Citizenship School, known as the Progressive Club, was established on Johns Island. In 1961, control of the Citizenship School Program was transferred from Highlander Folk School to the American Missionary Association, acting on behalf of the Southern Christian Leadership Council, and the Citizenship School moved its headquarters to the Dorchester Community Center. The Citizenship Education Program operated at Dorchester from 1961 to 1970, and during that period 897 Citizenship Schools were established while Southern Christian Leadership Council leadership planned their Birmingham demonstrations there. Septima Clarke supervised instruction at Dorchester, Andrew Young administered the program, and Dorothy Cotton served as a cultural emissary who used music and folklore to generate interest. During their tenure at Dorchester, Clarke, Young, and Cotton drove throughout the South recruiting prospective students. Students were bused to Dorchester for a week-long training program that began on Monday morning and ended after a Saturday night banquet so they could return home in time for church, share what they had learned, and hopefully establish citizenship classes in their own communities.