Standing Up for the Place You Love

Johns Island community organizer Abe Jenkins takes a stand—and together with others, takes on I-526.


Abe Jenkins experienced much of the world growing up in a military family, but his roots grow deep into Johns Island’s soil. Both of his parents were from the island and he spent long stretches there as a child, working alongside his cousins at the Progressive Club. The club was an activist hub for civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s, launched by his grandfather Esau Jenkins. Many civil rights leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Septima Clark, Andrew Young, Rev. Ralph Abernathy and Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) visited and participated in workshops there.

It was a co-op with a community grocery store, gas station and day care. And it had classroom space for citizenship schools, where residents developed skills to pass literacy tests that were required before they could vote. “I pumped gas, cut meat, ran the store,” Jenkins said.

No matter where he lived in his adult life, the Lowcountry was always home. When he retired from a career in health care in the Philadelphia area about 15 years ago, he came home for good.

He’s concerned about what will happen to Johns Island if the Interstate 526 extension is completed. The road would cross the Stono River from West Ashley, and then cross Johns and James islands before merging with James Island Connector. And, he said, it likely will bring more development, and ultimately more traffic to the island.

Bait-and-switch

In June, Jenkins joined the Coastal Conservation League and two others as plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed in South Carolina state court challenging Charleston County’s use of 2016 half-cent sales tax funds for the I-526 extension project.

There were many necessary road projects on the list Charleston County Council said would be built with the $2 billion raised by the tax, Jenkins said. And council members assured the public the money wouldn’t be used to extend I-526. So, he voted in favor of increasing the county’s sales tax. Then in January, Charleston County leaders singed a contract with the S.C. Transportation Infrastructure Bank and state Department of Transportation, committing more than $300 million in sales-tax funds to I-526.

“It was a bait-and-switch type thing,” he said. “it was underhanded and just not honest. I don’t like underhanded, deceitful maneuvering.”

Jason Crowley, the Conservation League’s Director of Communities and Transportation, said Jenkins’ involvement is invaluable. “Like his grandfather before him, Abe Jenkins has dedicated himself to be a voice for the people of Johns Island and strives to do what is best to protect the land, people and culture that make it such a special place. When he signed on as a plaintiff in our lawsuit against Charleston County’s use of the half-cent sales tax funds for the I-526 extension, I knew he would have the citizens’ best interests in mind every step of the way.”

An Old Model

Jenkins said it’s difficult to think about people losing their land to make way for the highway extension, especially when it likely won’t reduce traffic congestion. Instead, he said, studies show it will promote sprawl and could create even more traffic. “Building more roads is an old model I’m not sure is relevant in today’s world,” he said. “To move forward without re-evaluating if this still makes sense is crazy.”

What’s worse, he said, is that it “appears we’re not doing things that would provide immediate relief,” such as completing the pitchfork—a set of road improvements that would disperse traffic around the intersection of River Road and Maybank Highway.

Crowley said building interstate loops around cities is indeed an old model. For instance, in Milwaukee, WI, the Park East Freeway was removed in 2002 and replaces with and at-grade urban road. And in Portland, OR, the Harbor Drive Freeway was replaced by Tom McCall Waterfront Park in the 1970s.

Cities across the country are looking for new ways to create mixed-use areas with housing, commercial space and parks, Crowley said. Cities also are looking to get away from building more car-dependent sprawling suburbs instead growing in ways that promote public transit and bicycle and pedestrian access.

Love is Progressive. Hate is Expensive.

Jenkins, who now works as a political campaign consultant and organizer, said he and others on Johns Island aren’t opposed to “smart growth.” But they want to maintain the island’s rural character. And many people who live on Johns Island now aren’t aware of its rich civil rights history, he said. He wants that to change.

He remembers his grandfather as a visionary who also ran a bus transportation business. Esau Jenkins drove residents to Savannah, Atlantic Beach, and to school and jobs in Charleston. During the commute, riders were taught to read the part of the U.S. Constitution found on voter registrations, which enabled more African Americans to register to vote. He also gave rides to islanders in his personal 1966 Volkswagen Microbus with his motto “Love is Progressive. Hate is Expensive” on the back panel. That panel is now on display in the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture.

Jenkins and others are working to restore the Progressive Club, which was severely damaged by Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Part of the building will serve as a civil rights museum and another section will offer community services, he said. And organizers are also working with the staff from Charleston’s International African American Museum, which is expected to open in 2021. If visitors to the museum want to learn more about the civil rights era on Johns Island, he said, they can follow-up with a trip to the Progressive Club.

Jenkins understands that Johns Island has changed since his childhood. He thinks it can be a beautiful and harmonious place for everyone living there. We need to get beyond the binyahs and the comeyahs, Jenkins said, using the Gullah words to refer to natives who have “been here” a long time and new residents who have “come here” recently. Now, Jenkins said, “we are all live-heres.”


Article written by Diane Knich for the Coastal Conservation League’s semi-annual magazine | Published Fall 2019

Photos taken by Gately Williams.

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