The Fight for the Progressive Club
The Gentrification of Johns Island and its Effects on the Progressive Club
Gentrification - Outside populations come in and displace current populations. Shifting and impacting the culture and history of the region.
Census Demographics
The 2000 census demographic of Johns Island displays the black, white, and Hispanic populations. Red dots represent the black populations, the orange represents the Hispanic populations, and the blue represents the white populations.
The 2020 census demographic of Johns Island displays the black, white, and Hispanic populations. Red dots represent the black populations, the orange represents the Hispanic populations, and the blue represents the white populations.
The Johns Island area has experienced considerable changes in the last few years, notably concerning the African American and Hispanic populations. A new generation of young people's departure from the island has intensified due to low earnings, rising property values, and a lack of affordable accommodations (The Johns Island Advocate).
According to census statistics included in Charleston's 2020 City Plan, a vast demographic change has taken place from 2010 to 2018 black households decreased by 31% while white households increased by 64% (Parker, Adam, The Post, and Courier)
Background on Progressive Club
In 1948 the club was started by Esau Jenkins and Joe Williams. In 1956, they purchased the abandoned Mount Zion Elementary School, which had educated black elementary-aged children. They were able to do so with the assistance of the highlander folk center. In 1957, the Citizenship School inaugurated in the Progressive Club (The SC Picture Project).
The club dismantled the old school in 1962 and constructed the Progressive Club Sea Island Center the following year. The Progressive Club offered legal help to the people of Johns Island. The club contained a gym, a professional kitchen, a daycare facility, a fuel pump for agricultural fuel needs, and a grocery shop (The SC Picture Project).
After Esau Jenkins's death in 1972, many of the services offered by the club stopped. The grocery store continued to operate until 1975. Hurricane Hugo damaged the roof of the building in 1989. The Progressive Club had no insurance, and FEMA denied the club funds. The structure was a vital community center that helped catapult the Civil Rights Movement (The SC Picture Project).
In a newspaper clipping from the Avery Research Center, headlined “Effort underway to rebuild the progressive club as a community center,” written on Friday, April 7, 2006. Esau Jenkins's daughter Elaine Jenkins said, "organizers must submit a comprehensive restoration plan to the South Carolina Department of Archives and History, find an architect, and secure $500,000." The goal was to reestablish a community center on Johns Island, where AIDS and HIV, poverty, joblessness, drugs, and education can be addressed. To provide adolescents with a recreation center and place to get together and to offer a venue where the history of the Lowcountry black community can be appreciated.
Funding the programs would not be difficult, but what would be a challenge would be raising money for capital expenses. When the article was written in 2007, the club had raised $50,000 for the restoration project. The historic building would have to adhere to the same design as the old one, a national park service requirement of any site that qualifies for the national registry (The Post and Courier, Avery Research Center).
In a newspaper clipping at the Avery Research Center from the Charleston Chronicle, W.T. Goodwin of Wesley United Methodist Church suggested forming an advisory group to support the board in restoration efforts. A nonprofit was established, and as of 2007, the building was placed on the National Historic Places Registry. The Fields family donated ten acres to the project. The Greenbelt family, in turn, bought the land; two acres were then appointed to the Progressive Club. This property is across the road in front of the site (Charleston Chronicle, Avery Research Center).
How does this impact the Progressive Club?
Esau Jenkin's family blames the power lines conflict for halting the restoration of Progressive Club. In an article written by Abigal Darlington of the Post and Courier in 2016, the family blames Berkeley Electric Cooperative for halting its restoration project because of an above-ground line installed on the River Road property after Hurricane Hugo to support neighboring developments (The Post and Courtier, Avery Research Center).
An easement granted to the electric co-op allowed installing high-power and low-voltage power lines directly over the Progressive Club (Preservation Studio Graduate Program in Historic Preservation). The neighborhood adjacent to the Progressive Club is the cause of the power lines being installed.
Plans for the Future
Another newspaper clipping from the Avery shows that Clemson Architecture students agreed that the original Progressive Club structure should be regarded as a historic ruin; in honor of history. Across the street, the donated acres will be home to a bigger facility.
The building does not have to be a passive landscape, which only serves as a reminder of the past and has lost its ability to shape the present or the future, but an active landscape. To maintain the physical components of it as well as the fellowship and community, it can still be an active landscape reinterpreted as an outdoor space for community events, and a structure across the street can accommodate these ideas.
It would be relevant to the structure's original use and enable subsequent generations to connect with it despite gentrification (Preservation Studio Graduate Program in Historic Preservation).
