Note Type
Cataloging NoteNote
Filed in photo cabinet under "P."
Nine 4" x 6" prints also available (2, 10, 13, 20, 21, 22, 30, 31, 35).
There are actually 37 negatives on this roll of film; however, nos. 24-26 are blurred beyond usefulness (ceiling rafters) and nos. 35-36 are of a furnished office, clearly not the Progressive Club.
From National Register website: The Progressive Club Sea Island Center is significant for its role as a Citizenship School and for its association with events and persons important in the Civil Rights Movement. The Club building is also significant for its association with the development of continued adult education, social history, politics, ethnic heritage, recreation, and commerce for the African American community of the Sea Islands beginning with the building’s construction in 1963 until the death of the Club’s founder Esau Jenkins in 1972. The structure and site served as a vital community center, providing a home for the Progressive Club’s legal and financial assistance program, adult education program, dormitory lodging, and as a community recreational, child care, meeting place and grocery store. The building is the only remaining structure of the era built to house a “Citizenship School” in South Carolina where adult education classes and workshops enabled African American citizens to register, vote, and become aware of the political processes of their communities. While the first citizenship school class at the Progressive Club site was held in January 1957, the Citizenship Schools became a model for Civil Rights leaders for similar efforts throughout the South during the late 1950s and continued as classes and workshops at the Progressive Club well into the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. The workshops, classes, and folk festivals hosted by the Progressive Club were either attended or facilitated by people who were later catapulted to the national stage in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Listed in the National Register October 24, 2007.
From Avery Research Center Esau Jenkins Papers, description note: Esau Jenkins was born and raised on Johns Island, SC, in 1910 and lived most of his life there. With very little formal education, he became a businessman and civil rights leader. Jenkins founded the Progressive Club in 1948, which encouraged local African Americans to register to vote, through the aid of Citizenship Schools, a topic he was educated in by his attendance at Highlander Folk Center in Tennessee. In 1959, he organized the Citizens' Committee of Charleston County dedicated to the economic, cultural and political improvement of local African Americans. With a personal motto "Hate is Expensive, Love is Progress," Jenkins prospered in his community, helping to found the Community Organization Federal Credit Union and serving on many local boards and committees. The father of a large family, he died in 1972; after his death many institutions, programs and a bridge were named for him.