Esau Jenkins and the Progressive Club’s Work Honored with a Historical Marker

In 1948, Esau Jenkins founded the Progressive Club to encourage political education and voting registration as a means of uplifting the Charleston African-American community. Because of low funds, at first Jenkins had to host citizenship classes in his VW bus, driving people to and from their places of work in Charleston. Soon, however, Jenkins’s educational movement picked up speed and garnered an increasing amount of support. In 1957, Jenkins–along with Septima Clark and Bernice Robin–founded the first Citizenship School as a means of accomplishing the goals of the Progressive Club. Incredibly influential (similar schools developed throughout the southeast using the Citizenship School as their model), the school continued to grow and help its students develop the educational and political skill-sets to effect change through voting and political activism.

Courtesy of the Avery Research Center

On September 8, 2013, the Preservation Society of Charleston unveiled a historic marker on Johns Island honoring the work Esau Jenkins and the Progressive Club did for the Civil Rights movement. Bill Saunders, a Civil Rights activist who worked with Jenkins, spoke at the event.

Queen Quet of the Gullah/Geechee Nation attended the event as well and has documented the unveiling on the Gullah/Geechee blog which can be found here). The Gullah/Geechee Nation is a “nation within a nation” representing the rights of Gullah people and preserving and promoting the unique Gullah culture here in the Lowcountry.  The Nation corresponds with the federally declared Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor and extends more or less from Jacksonville, North Carolina to Jacksonville, Florida. Queen Quet’s report and the video documenting the unveiling of the marker can be found below.


Filed under: Jubilee Project

1969 Hospital Workers’ Strike Marker to be Unveiled TODAY

Today at 3:00 p.m. at the MUSC Basic Science Building, a marker honoring the efforts of Mary Moultrie and the 1969 Hospital Workers’ Strike will be unveiled. The Preservation Society of Charleston has unveiled several markers this year commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights movement; this marker will be the last one in the current project.

Courtesy of the Avery Research Center

The unveiling is free and open to the public and will feature special guest, Mary Moultrie. Mary Moultrie, a nurse’s aide at MUSC in 1968, organized the strike to gain equal pay and fairer working conditions for black nurses. Due to institutionalized prejudice, black nurses were forced to work in unfair environments: they faced daily harassment, they were refused job titles that would grant them higher (and fairer) pay, and they were not allowed to unionize. Mary Moultrie organized 400 hospital employees–mostly black women working below minimum wage–to strike on June 18th, 1969. The strike lasted for 113 days and gained the attention of national leaders such as Coretta Scott King, Jesse Jackson, and Ralph Abernathy.

The protest was another success for non-violent activism. MUSC re-hired all the strikers and instituted official grievance procedures for workers.

In 2008, Stephen Colbert and Civil Rights activist, Andrew Young, discussed the 1969 Hospital Workers’ Strike. Colbert’s father, James Colbert, was Vice President of Academic Affairs at MUSC at the time. Video can be found via the link.

Filed under: Jubilee Project