The Progressive Club, Johns Island

Why this matters here

The LDHI Progressive Club exhibit situates the first Citizenship School class at Johns Island in January 1957 and the collaboration among Septima Clark, Esau Jenkins, Bernice Robinson, and Highlander Folk School linking literacy to voter registration and ordinary civic life. The World We Make Together treats that curriculum choice—especially Robinson as teacher—as refusal of educational humiliation that had enforced exclusion. The source documents a local educational beginning; the book asks how shared capacity enters a relationship without reproducing the hierarchy it aims to undo.