Gullah people yearned to ‘catch the learning.’ Then this St. Helena Island school opened
Penn Center on St. Helena Island, one of the first schools in the country for former slaves during and after the Civil War, became a safe place for leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. to visit in the 1960s at the height of the civil rights movement.
Today, at its historic campus, exhibitions and programs continue to document its key role in the nation’s history for the public while celebrating Gullah Geechee culture and educating students and teachers.
Penn Center will mark its 160th anniversary Sept. 23-24 with gospel singing and discussion of the school’s rich history by authors, historians and a native resident who went on to become an author and TV star.
Recent archaeological finds related to the grave site of one of its abolitionist founders also will be shared during the free events at 16 Penn Center Circle West, which are open to the public.
The kick-off, at 4:30-6:30 Friday will feature members of Beaufort County church choirs performing a “gospel explosion.”
At 2:30 Saturday, Vernon Burton, a history professor at Clemson University, will discuss, “Penn Center: A History Preserved,” a book he co-authored with Wilbur Cross.
The book, according to University of Georgia Press, captures what the Gullah people of St. Helena Island still talk about: Their people wanted to “catch the learning” after Northern abolitionists founded Penn School in 1862, less than six months after the Union army captured the South Carolina Sea Islands.
Penn Center’s earliest incarnation, the book says, was as a refuge where escaped and liberated enslaved people could obtain formal liberal arts schooling, even as the Civil War raged on sometimes just miles away.
Penn Center then provided agricultural and industrial arts training for African Americans after Reconstruction and through the Jim Crow era, the Great Depression and two world wars. Later, during the civil rights movement, Penn Center became a safe meeting place for organizations such as King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Peace Corps.
Today, the book explains, Penn Center continues a tradition of leadership in progressive causes. President Barack Obama designated it a Reconstruction Era National Monument.
Burton will be joined by Hilton Head Island native Emory Campbell, a former Penn Center executive director who wrote, “Gullah Cultural Legacies” in 2008 and Carolyn Grant, Hilton Head Island’s communication director and former Island Packet reporter in a discussion of Penn Center history.
Grant and Campbell wrote “Gullah Days: Hilton Head Islanders Before the Bridge, 1861-1956,” with Thomas Barnwell Jr.
After the discussion of the center’s history, Scott Teodorski, superintendent of the Beaufort-based Reconstruction Era National Park , will present recent archaeology finds associated with the burial site of Ellen Murray, one of the two founders of the Penn School.
At 5:30 p.m., St. Helena Island native Ron Daise will read from two of his most recent novellas, “We Wear the Mask: Unraveled Truths in a Pre-Gullah Community” and “Turtle Dove Done Drooped His Wings, A Gullah Tale of Fight or Flight,” followed by a book signing.
Daise is known by many as “Mr. Ron” from “Gullah Gullah Island,” the award-winning children’s program on the Nickelodeon network, which aired in the 1990s.
