The Progressive Club

The Progressive Club, built in 1962-63, served as a store and community center for Johns Island and other Sea Islands until Hurricane Hugo badly damaged it in 1989. The club had been founded in 1948 by civil rights activist Esau Jenkins (1910-1972), who worked to improve educational, political, economic, and other opportunities for blacks on the island and in the lowcountry. In 1957, Jenkins, Septima Clark (1898-1987), and Bernice Robinson (1914-1994) founded the first Citizenship School to encourage literacy and voter registration. Its success led to many similar schools across the South, called “the base on which the whole civil rights movement was built.” The Progressive Club was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.

South Carolina · United States