Jordan Wiggins graduates from the spring 2019 session.
Nearly 75 years ago, Modjeska Monteith Simkins wrote, “It must be conceded that at this very hour more so than at any time in the history of this nation, there is urgent need for the development of progressive thinkers to become the leaders of TOMORROW.”
It was the lead of an appeal Simkins mailed to college students across the state inviting them to attend a Leadership Training School she was helping organize in the summer of 1946 at Harbison College in Irmo.
In 2015 the SC Progressive Network launched the Modjeska Simkins School for Human Rights to honor her legacy and to advance her work for social justice. “We didn’t even know about the leadership institute when we started the school,” said Network Director Brett Bursey, who was mentored by Simkins during the last 18 years of her life. “It was stunning to find out how closely its curriculum mirrored our own, how this history had been lost, and how little things have changed.”
Students learn a people’s history of South Carolina, stories of the resisters who through the years have challenged the state’s unjust laws, culture, and customs. They also learn practical skills to be better citizens and more effective grass roots organizers.
“The Modjeska School pushes its students to think about the importance of history to the here and now,” said the school’s faculty coordinator Dr. Robert Greene II, assistant history professor at Claflin University in Orangeburg. “In an era when facts and experience are constantly under attack, it is important for citizens of South Carolina to understand that every decision, every bill passed, every statement uttered by a politician, has a history.”
South Carolina has long had an over-sized influence on the national stage, in terms of individual players as well as historical significance. The reasons can be traced back to the state’s beginning, a state built on a slave economy and maintained through the centuries by its exploitation of the working class, and its unrelenting resistance to progressive change. Connecting those dots — and understanding what they mean — lies at the core of the school’s curriculum.
Classes cover political and social theory, as well as strategies, tactics, and practical skills for making progressive change. Upon graduation, students work on one of the Network’s ongoing projects or create one of their own.
Among last year’s graduates was Vivian Anderson, who founded Every Black Girl after the attack of a Black child by a school resource officer at Spring Valley in 2015. She wanted to understand the history of South Carolina in order to make her a better organizer. “I do the work I do because I believe in humanity,” she said, “but I really stand for the liberation of Black people and how they define liberation for themselves. I want something different for legacies beyond me.”
Chris Gardner decided to attend the Modjeska School because he wanted to become more effective and strategic in his organizing rather than simply reacting blindly. “I was ashamed to be from Columbia, and as soon as I had a chance I moved away, but I realized I can’t be from somewhere else. Rather than chase greener grass, I thought, who else is going to fix it? There’s not many other people who are going to roll up their sleeves and try to figure things out. It’s up to all of us.”
Dr. Greene said, “Modjeska Simkins, Martin Luther King, Jr., and so many other activists believed in the importance of history to making change in the present. The Modjeska School continues that tradition into 2020. Anyone interested in activism, or simply becoming better informed and more effective citizens, should apply for the Modjeska School. Being well informed is the first step to taking action to make our community, our state, our nation, and our world a better place.”
Enrollment is open for this year’s spring session, which runs March 15 – July 5. Classes will be held on alternate Monday evenings 6:30-8:30 at the SC Progressive Network’s new HQ at 1340 Elmwood Ave., downtown Columbia. For details about the school or to download an application, see the web site.
On the first day of the SC 2020 legislative session, fair maps advocates gathered at the State House holding signs with the names of state lawmakers and the percentage by which each won their seats. The original plan to assemble on the front steps of the State House was rained out, but it didn’t dampen the spirits of those who filled the lobby.
Some drove hours to be there — from Charleston, Greenville, Rock Hill, and more than a dozen from Horry County, where activists have been working a county-based petition drive for fair maps in South Carolina.
Brian Kasprzyk and his wife, Malle Kasprzyk, drove from Little River. It was a long trip, but worth the drive, he said. On the Fair Maps Facebook group, he posted: “Today was a great day for democracy and fair maps in South Carolina. It was great because 2 republican and 2 Democratic legislators joined together to address the crowd and support redistricting legislation — for the first time.”
Brian Kasprzyk
It’s true. In an unprecedented move, a bipartisan group of SC lawmakers stood in the State House together to make a strong and unified public statement against gerrymandering in South Carolina. DemocratsRep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter and Sen. Mike Fanning joined RepublicansRep. Gary Clary and Sen. Tom Davis at a morning press conference on Jan. 14.
Retired Sen. Phil Leventis made opening comments. In his 32 years as a state lawmaker, he took part in five redistricting sessions. “In 2002, we reapportioned the Senate,” he said, “and before the elections in 2004 it was reapportioned again. I can’t tell you why. But I can tell you it raises questions about the whole process. And the process needs to be fair.”
The system is broken. Fact is, 75 percent of South Carolina voters have only one name on the ballot for House or Senate. Ninety percent of legislative seats were won with an average of 86% of the vote. Just 10 percent of the General Assembly was won by less than 60 percent. That’s 17 seats out of 170.
Competitive districts make winners work to please a majority of the voters, not just the small percent that turns out for the primary.
The task at hand is studying and debating the several proposals that have been filed, and finding common ground that, ultimately, gets politicians out of the business of picking their voters.
“South Carolina has more problems with gerrymandering than any state in the United States of America,” Sen. Fanning said. “It is not a Republican problem or a Democratic problem; it is a people not having a voice in their government problem. For every solid, safe Republican seat we have a solid, safe Democratic seat. We have created an apartheid here in South Carolina that has divided the voters at the whim of politicians.”
Rep. Cobb-Hunter said, “We all can agree the system is, indeed, rigged.” She vowed to support any fair maps bill that gets traction. “It makes for a better South Carolina, a better governance when all of us who are blessed and highly favored enough to be in these positions when we have to reach out to everybody as opposed to a select group.”
Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter
Rep. Clary said, “What we’re talking about here is fundamental fairness. The idea that I, or any other member of the General Assembly, can go in and adjust the line to suit my whim – -to move someone out of my district or to remove a group from my district — is repugnant to me.”
Sen. Davis said, “What we have is a crisis of legitimacy. The idea that I or any other member of the General Assembly can go in and adjust the line to suit my whim – to move someone out of my district or to remove a group from my district is repugnant to me. What we’re talking about is restoring people’s faith in representative government. This is about returning power to the sovereign people.”
Fanning, a former social studies teacher, said he taught civic engagement. “We registered to vote in my class. I made sure my students knew where to vote and when to vote. I had pumped them up, with as much passion as I had inside me. What broke my heart is that when my students came back and said, ‘There was only one name on the ballot. My vote didn’t matter.’ There wasn’t anything I could say to that.
“We have banded together as Republicans and Democrats in the Senate and the House. Each of us has bills, but none has gotten traction because the argument doesn’t belong to us, the argument belongs to the people.”
Preston Anderson has taken that directive to heart. As a volunteer with the Fair Maps SC Coalition has spent months going to events to talk about fair maps and gather signatures for the Richland County petition drive. By now he has talked to hundreds of South Carolinians. “Across the political spectrum, people were very interested in learning more about gerrymandering and the effect it has had on the political situation in South Carolina.”
Fair Maps organizer Preston Anderson
Fair Maps volunteers who have been in the field see a steep learning curve ahead. They are finding that a surprising number of voters know little to nothing about gerrymandering and how it corrodes the integrity of South Carolina’s elections. Same goes for lawmakers.
To that end, we gave each of them our handout full of numbers that should alarm anyone who cares about the state of democracy in South Carolina.
Once upon a more hopeful time, there was a place called GROW, the Grass Roots Organizing Workshop.
For 20 years, the unassuming building behind the ballpark in Columbia’s mill village marked the intersection of art, politics, and grass roots organizing in South Carolina.
The original GROW on Bluff Road
GROW was a true collective born of optimism and faith in the radical ideals of peace, justice, equality, democracy, and respect for Mother Earth.
In 1996, GROW launched the SC Progressive Network. It remains the state’s oldest, home-grown grass roots organizing body.
When GROW unexpectedly lost its lease in 2000, the Network lost its home, the progressive community lost a vital organizing hub, and the capital city lost a cultural treasure.
Truth be told, South Carolina has never seen anything like it.
Until now.
When the GROW building was shuttered, the SC Progressive Network was suddenly homeless. We met in temporary spaces until 2009, when we moved into the historic home of Modjeska Monteith Simkins, an ally and mentor at GROW for nearly 20 years.
Modjeska Simkins at GROW
When Historic Columbia received funds to renovate the house, we again had to move. Much as we loved it there, it was time to find a place of our own.
We didn’t go far. We bought the building next door, at the corner of Marion Street and Elmwood Avenue, in the heart of Columbia.
The Network’s new home!
We’re calling the new place GROW, a nod to our roots and the original mission of movement building.
It is wonderful to have our own home again. The move brings new opportunities — as well as challenges. We must remodel the building to meet city codes and our IT needs. We plan to add a kitchen and, eventually, a second story.
We are counting on friends and allies to help make GROW a vibrant and sustainable resource for South Carolina activists to network, make plans, create art, and find fellowship.
A MODEL FOR ORGANIZING
Unique among SC nonprofits, GROW was worker-owned and self-sustaining. They ran an eco-friendly, union print shop, and a coffee-house that served up loveburgers, sweet potato fries, and live music.
Our aim from the beginning was to be self-sufficient, free of the constraints nonprofits face when reliant upon foundations with no understanding of South Carolina’s cultural and political landscape.
The cafe and print shop kept the lights on and paid staff, but the point of that work was to support all the rest: mobilizing for human rights at home and abroad, and challenging sexism, white privilege, homophobia, institutional racism, and the military industrial complex.
GROW organized pickets, boycotts, and mass rallies, the biggest a 1978 anti-nuclear gathering of 5,000 protesters in Barnwell that ended in 271 peaceful arrests and a surprise performance by Jackson Browne.
Anti-nuclear rally in Barnwell, SC
They started the GROW Food Co-op that served Lower Richland for 40 years. They published POINT, the alternative newspaper that for 10 years covered stories the mainstream press would not.
Over the years, we have “made a way out of no way,” as Ms. Simkins taught us.
The SC Progressive Network has received some grants, and for those we are grateful but we don’t rely on them. Instead, we hold true to the idea of being beholden only to the community that sustains us.
A LOOK BACK
Since our founding in 1996, we have built a solid record. Here are a few highlights. The SC Progressive Network:
Organized mass rallies for a moral budget, Medicaid expansion, and against the Confederate flag on the State House grounds. On the first day of the new administration, we mobilized 4,000 protesters in Columbia.
Held town halls on racial profiling, workplace discrimination, and political corruption. We have screened documentaries, led panel discussions, and attended countless legislative hearings.
Created in 1998 the state’s first online campaign finance database to track donor contributions to politicians.
Has monitored elections and run the Election Protection hotline in South Carolina since 2008.
Researched disparities in the criminal justice system and found that black men are incarcerated at a higher rate in SC than anywhere in the nation. We introduced a bill to require cops to report all stops that became law in 2006.
Led the challenge to SC’s voter ID law. While we won the battle (you don’t need a photo ID to vote here) we lost the war because confusion over the law led to the very voter suppression we tried to avert.
Wrote biographies on Modjeska Simkins, Harriet Hancock, and Sarah Leverette, and History Denied, Recovering South Carolina’s Stolen Past. Another book is in the works.
Won a lawsuit in 2016 to allow Greenville County college students living on campus to register to vote.
Challenging the state’s refusal to expand Medicaid in 2014
A LOOK FORWARD
The new GROW is already busy. The space is being used by the Network and a host of friends and allies: labor unions, peace and anti-racist activists, a youth-led immigrant rights group, a nonprofit working to empower young girls, volunteers for a citizens’ campaign to end gerrymandering, a quilting group, a reading group, and poets are meeting for a regular open mic night.
In the coming months, GROW will be used for organizing skills workshops, art installations, and will house a lending library of books and films. This spring, it will be the classroom for the Modjeska Simkins School.
Eventually, we plan to open a cafe with a modest but quality menu.
Already, GROW is clearly meeting a need. With your support, we can create a welcoming space to grow and serve another generation of community organizers in South Carolina.
YOUR INVESTMENT MATTERS
The Network has created the kind of community that only comes with time, trust, and shared experience. You can’t buy that. But you can support it.
Whether it’s time, skills, money — or all three — we welcome whatever you can contribute. We promise to put it to good use. The need is more critical than ever for a new GROW, a place where we can study, map plans, make art, and create a more just and sustainable future.
Your support makes these projects possible:
• Modjeska Simkins School for Human Rights was launched in 2015 with a three-month course taught by some of the state’s leading activists, professors, and historians. We equip emerging organizers and those new to South Carolina with the tools they need to be engaged citizens and effective leaders. Our new home will allow the school to expand its curriculum and its reach into Midlands communities.
Modjeska School graduation, spring 2019
• Sunday Socials are the public component of the Modjeska School, offering free film screenings, panel discussions, and author round-tables on various topics of current or historic significance.
• Missing Voter Project targets select communities to register the state’s under-represented voters. Since 2004, the MVP has added more than 10,000 people to the voting rolls.
• New Legacy Project is the youth coordinating body of the Network. They organize events, record a podcast, and are compiling a report on the state of South Carolina’s younger people.
• Progressive Policy Institute is the state’s only nonpartisan think tank that researches problems and writes legislation to benefit the people’s best interests.
• Racial Justice Project investigates and challenges institutional and systemic racism. We provide tools for communities to mitigate racial profiling. We identify unregistered and infrequent voters, and help emerging leaders organize in their schools and their neighborhoods.
• Fair Maps SC is a citizens campaign to end gerrymandering in South Carolina by letting voters draw district maps. SC has the least competitive elections in the nation because politicians get to pick their own voters. Ours is the only remedy that doesn’t rely on lawmakers or the courts.
Former state Sen. Phil Leventis talks with Network organizer Omari Fox
• The Monument Project leads group tours of statues and markers that perpetuate a false narrative of our state’s complex history. As long as law prevents their removal, it behooves us to know more about the monuments and markers in our public spaces.
Monument tour of the State House grounds, led by graduates of the Modjeska School
WAYS YOU CAN GIVE
Because you value the work of the SC Progressive Network INVEST!
Your annual contribution keeps our projects going and growing, and supports the new building and infrastructure for the next generation of activists.
Recurring donations are the best way to help us meet our annual budget. One-time donations are welcome. Contributions of $25 include a Network membership. Contributions above $25 are tax-deductible.
Mail checks to: SC Progressive Network, PO Box 8325, Columbia SC, 20202
CAPITAL CAMPAIGN
The Capital Campaign must raise $350,000 over the next few years to pay off the mortgage, remodel the building, make it fully accessible, and meet all codes. We have already raised the $41,000 for the down payment and other expenses. Please use the enclosed pledge card to set a giving target. Donations to the Capital Campaign are tax-deductible.
Gifts of stock yield a tax deduction of 100% of the value the day gifted, and reduce or eliminate capital gains on future stock sales.
For details about pledges, gifts, or a bequeath in your will, call 803-808-3384
The SC Progressive Network invites you to join us on Thursday, Dec. 5, for our 10th annual birthday party to honor the life and legacy of human rights icon Modjeska Monteith Simkins.
The drop-in at our new HQ — 1340 Elmwood Ave., downtown Columbia — begins at 5:30 with cake and port (Modjeska’s favorite) and live music by sax master Ken Cheeks.
Organizers and supporters of the Aug. 31 benefit performance of God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse, held a press conference at the SC State House on July 24 to promote the event.
Big news, friends. We just got the keys to our new building, the former dry cleaning shop next door to the historic Modjeska Simkins House, where we’ve maintained offices since 2009. Much as we’ve loved being in that historic home, we are excited to have space to grow and call our very own.
After our monthly Network meeting on Monday, a few of us went to check out our new digs. We couldn’t resist reworking the signage while we were there and dream about the messages we will be sharing with the traffic on Elmwood Ave.
This is a huge step in our evolution. If you can, please help us fund the necessary rehab of the building by making a contribution. Donate HERE at our secure web site or drop a check in the mail to SC Progressive Network, PO Box 8325, Columbia SC 29202. Thank you!
At our July meeting, Brett Bursey gave an update on the Fair Maps SC campaign to create a citizens commission to draw district lines, removing lawmakers from the process. We suspected it would be a challenge to get the bipartisan leadership needed to make our plan viable. We were right.
Graduates of the spring session of the Modjeska Simkins School picked up their diplomas on Saturday, cheered on by family and friends who gathered to help them celebrate. If past classes are any indication, the ceremony did not mark the end of their activist education, but a new beginning.
“We have been so impressed with the graduates of the last three sessions,” said Network Director Brett Bursey, who led the class with Claflin University professor Dr. Robert Greene. “Their level of enthusiasm and engagement has exceeded our expectations. The whole idea is for them take what they’ve learned back into their schools, organizations, and communities. And it’s working.”
In the final class, students talked about how they planned to put to good use what they had learned. Some joined existing projects; others will create and collaborate on new ones. Past graduates have gone on to launch a podcast; revive a feminist group in Columbia that is spearheading plans to ratify the ERA in SC; conduct tours that revisit the historical narratives of the monuments in the state’s public spaces; and grow a vibrant youth organization—the New Legacy Project—that has been compiling a State of the Youth Report. Several former students now serve on the Network’s executive committee. Others are volunteering with local nonprofits and community groups.
The course isn’t easy. It includes challenging reading assignments and difficult discussions. Students meet every other week for two-hour sessions, which sometimes go long. This session ran from March 18 through June 29, with optional workshops on certain Sundays. Guest lecturers included Chief Andy Spell, Lewis Pitts, Dr. Bobby Donaldson, and Louis Burke.
The curriculum is both practical and academic. The first classes teach the history of South Carolina that students didn’t learn in school. The last classes offer the practical tools and resources for successful grassroots organizing in South Carolina.
After graduation, Melanie McGehee shared with her friends on social media, “Honestly, of the times I’ve left somewhere with a ‘certificate,’ this is the one I’m proud of. It’s a different sort of feeling, but I like it.”
Her 13-year-old son Ian also earned a diploma. He was the youngest of the group, and we wondered whether he could handle the material. We were wrong to worry; see clip from orientation.
During the last class, when discussion turned to why students took the course and why we do the work we do, Dr. Greene said, “Our story is not over, but it can turn out any number of ways. I used to be an optimist, but then I pursued a PhD in history. What I’ve learned, what I’ve read about and written also gives me a sense of hope, not a plastic, fake hope that everything will be okay tomorrow. But if we do the work that needs to be done here and now, then if I’m lucky enough to have kids and grandkids, I can tell them we did the best we could and we helped make a better world for you. The alternative is that we let you guys down.”
See more of Dr. Greene’s remarks in this clip.
A few students share some thoughts in this clip.
Congratulations to all the graduates (including those not pictured here): Catherine Adams, Preston Anderson, Vivian Anderson, Molefi Askari, Russell Cody, Johnaca Dunlap, Judy Franchini, Chris Gardner, Melanie Griffin, Marjorie Hammock, Eva Keith, Vince Matthews, Ian McGehee, Melanie McGehee, Norman Miles, John Miller, Laura Nicklin. Myllasa Riggins, Tayyaba Sadiq, Jordan Wiggins, and Emily Wilson.
Ms. Modjeska Monteith Simkins would be proud.
See more photos from the spring session in our online album.
