WEBVTT - How Did the Penn Center Become a Civil Rights Sanctuary? 0:00:01.840 --> 0:00:08.039 Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff. Lauren 0:00:08.080 --> 0:00:13.160 Vogelbaum here nestled off the beaten path in the heart 0:00:13.200 --> 0:00:16.520 of the Gullageechee Sea Islands of South Carolina's Low Country 0:00:16.760 --> 0:00:19.720 is an American landmark that many have never heard of. 0:00:21.040 --> 0:00:24.720 Situated between rich salt marshes and the Atlantic Coast and 0:00:24.880 --> 0:00:29.240 shaded by moss Leyden Live Oaks, The Penn Center, located 0:00:29.280 --> 0:00:31.680 for over one hundred and fifty years on Saint Helena 0:00:31.720 --> 0:00:35.240 Island in Beaufort County, is a historic site of African 0:00:35.240 --> 0:00:40.440 American education, culture, social justice, and community development that continues 0:00:40.479 --> 0:00:46.240 its work today. In eighteen sixty two, six months before 0:00:46.280 --> 0:00:50.919 President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation and three years 0:00:50.960 --> 0:00:54.760 before the Thirteenth Amendment legally abolished slavery, a group of 0:00:54.800 --> 0:00:59.960 Pennsylvania Quaker and Unitarian missionaries and abolitionists founded the Pennsi 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:03.840 School on Saint Helena. This was part of what's called 0:01:04.000 --> 0:01:09.640 the Port Royal Experiment. In South Carolina. Plantation owners had 0:01:09.640 --> 0:01:14.280 built an economic empire on enslaved labor. It was the 0:01:14.319 --> 0:01:16.600 first state to seed from the Union, as sparking the 0:01:16.640 --> 0:01:20.440 Civil War and becoming an immediate target of Union forces. 0:01:20.480 --> 0:01:24.560 In eighteen sixty one, the US Navy seized the Port 0:01:24.640 --> 0:01:29.360 Royal Sound from Confederate troops. The following year, the plantation 0:01:29.480 --> 0:01:33.720 owners fled the Sea islands, reluctantly, abandoning their prized crop 0:01:33.800 --> 0:01:37.920 of world renowned cotton and liberating somewhere from ten thousand 0:01:38.000 --> 0:01:42.560 to thirty two thousand enslaved people. Seeing a need and 0:01:42.640 --> 0:01:45.920 an opportunity, the US opened the area to a number 0:01:45.959 --> 0:01:49.520 of public and private programs aiming to figure out how 0:01:49.560 --> 0:01:53.480 to reform a social and economic structure based on enslavement 0:01:53.880 --> 0:01:57.400 into a free society. It was an early and less 0:01:57.480 --> 0:02:04.160 restricted form of reconstruction. Northern abolitionists and humanitarians donated funds 0:02:04.240 --> 0:02:07.920 to help freed people by former plantation land at reasonable 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:13.640 rates and establish farms, hospitals, and schools. The Penn School, 0:02:13.680 --> 0:02:16.919 and named after Quaker activist William Penn, was the first 0:02:16.919 --> 0:02:19.880 school founded in a Confederate state for the sole purpose 0:02:20.000 --> 0:02:24.079 of educating freed people. It began in the living room 0:02:24.120 --> 0:02:27.760 of the abandoned Oaks Plantation before the first schoolhouse was built, 0:02:28.000 --> 0:02:31.440 and eventually grew to become a fifty acre campus, including 0:02:31.520 --> 0:02:35.040 nineteen now historic buildings. The land was donated by a 0:02:35.080 --> 0:02:39.240 freed entrepreneur by the name of Hasting Gant. The first 0:02:39.240 --> 0:02:42.799 classes were taught by white abolitionists Laura Town and Ellen Murray, 0:02:43.080 --> 0:02:46.079 and briefly by Charlotte Forton, who was the first African 0:02:46.120 --> 0:02:50.880 American teacher at Penn. The earliest curriculum followed the New 0:02:50.880 --> 0:02:57.640 England eurocentric model of socialized education that included reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, history, 0:02:57.720 --> 0:03:02.680 and music. Sixty seven, South Carolina had a majority of 0:03:02.800 --> 0:03:06.760 black registered voters. Black candidates were winning elections, and the 0:03:06.800 --> 0:03:11.679 Penn School received public funding, but the post war reconstruction 0:03:11.760 --> 0:03:15.000 era in the state was rocky, and a decade later 0:03:15.200 --> 0:03:19.160 Jim Crow laws had suffused the South. The school struggled 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:23.840 but stayed afloat thanks to private donations. In the early 0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:27.520 nineteen hundreds, RASA. B. Cooley and Grace House, two other 0:03:27.639 --> 0:03:31.000 northern white women, revised the curriculum to follow Booker T. 0:03:31.160 --> 0:03:36.440 Washington's Hampton tuscg model of industrial education, including various trades 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:41.920 and agricultural sciences. They excised some classical studies like algebra 0:03:41.960 --> 0:03:45.680 and Latin, and added courses such as masonry, carpentry, and 0:03:45.760 --> 0:03:49.200 the domestic arts up to the end of World War II, 0:03:49.520 --> 0:03:52.320 the state of South Carolina only required that education for 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:55.680 Black Americans go through the seventh grade level, but Penn 0:03:55.720 --> 0:03:58.840 provided schooling through the twelfth grade of plus adult education 0:03:58.960 --> 0:04:03.160 classes as well. However, by the late nineteen forties, the 0:04:03.200 --> 0:04:07.520 population of Saint Helena had dwindled significantly. Many Islanders and 0:04:07.600 --> 0:04:11.200 young people in particular, were leaving isolated Beeford County to 0:04:11.320 --> 0:04:15.760 seek opportunities in larger cities. In response, the board of 0:04:15.760 --> 0:04:19.320 trustees at Penn redefined the purpose of the school and 0:04:19.400 --> 0:04:22.560 launched the Penn Community Service Center in nineteen forty eight, 0:04:23.000 --> 0:04:26.720 including services like daycare, a hangout space for tines, and 0:04:26.920 --> 0:04:32.120 health clinic. They also offered midwife training beyond that, Throughout 0:04:32.160 --> 0:04:35.560 the nineteen fifties and sixties, Penn Center became a nexus 0:04:35.560 --> 0:04:38.960 for civil rights activism and social justice, not just for 0:04:39.000 --> 0:04:43.800 South Carolina but for the entire nation. Being isolated out 0:04:43.800 --> 0:04:46.200 among the marshes, it was one of the few places 0:04:46.240 --> 0:04:49.440 in the Jim Crow South where interracial groups of activists 0:04:49.520 --> 0:04:53.919 could convene in integrated facilities, including overnight, without the threat 0:04:53.960 --> 0:04:59.400 of legal consequences or outside violence. Penn Center hosted human 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:04.080 rights conference with groups including the NAACP, the World Peace Foundation, 0:05:04.400 --> 0:05:08.000 the Congress of Racial Equality, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 0:05:08.279 --> 0:05:11.800 the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee, and the Peace Corps, 0:05:12.120 --> 0:05:14.599 just to name a few. It was a place to 0:05:14.760 --> 0:05:20.880 organize and strategize. A former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, in 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:23.719 his role as leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:27.400 introduced doctor Martin Luther King Junior to the serenity and 0:05:27.480 --> 0:05:32.040 security of Penn Center. Between nineteen sixty four and nineteen 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:35.880 sixty seven, King visited Penn five times, along with other 0:05:35.960 --> 0:05:39.880 luminaries of the civil rights movement and countless unnamed activists. 0:05:41.080 --> 0:05:43.800 It became a sort of refuge for King outside of 0:05:43.800 --> 0:05:46.240 the pressure of being a civil rights leader on the 0:05:46.320 --> 0:05:50.800 national stage. King composed many of his speeches at Penn, 0:05:51.000 --> 0:05:53.680 including his I Have a Dream speech, which he wrote 0:05:53.680 --> 0:05:57.960 while staying in the Hasting Gant Cottage. He also spoke 0:05:58.000 --> 0:06:01.600 there about his broader concerns outside of the civil rights movement, 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:05.400 which included capitalism and the economic and equality of these 0:06:05.400 --> 0:06:09.080 some forty million Americans living in poverty, and his then 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:14.400 unpopular anti war stance regarding Vietnam. During a rare formal 0:06:14.440 --> 0:06:16.840 speech at Penn he laid out a set of what 0:06:16.880 --> 0:06:23.880 he called the inseparable triplets, three intrinsically connected evils in America, racism, 0:06:24.160 --> 0:06:29.960 excessive materialism, and militarism. He urged his fellow leaders there 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:33.200 to consider and address all three in their attempts to 0:06:33.240 --> 0:06:38.000 elicit change. The organizers who gathered at Penn Center didn't 0:06:38.000 --> 0:06:41.320 always agree on the best courses of action, and although 0:06:41.360 --> 0:06:44.560 it is remote, they still had to exercise caution to 0:06:44.640 --> 0:06:48.159 keep each other safe, perhaps especially doctor King, who was 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:51.479 very much in the public eye and was assassinated in 0:06:51.480 --> 0:06:55.159 April nineteen sixty eight in Memphis, Tennessee, just four months 0:06:55.200 --> 0:06:57.720 after his last meeting at Penn Center, and the day 0:06:57.760 --> 0:07:01.159 after he had told striking sanitation workers, We've got to 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:06.000 give ourselves to this struggle. Until the end. After the 0:07:06.000 --> 0:07:09.880 Civil Rights era, the center continued its work, hosting retreats 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:14.080 for churches and other organizations, training peace corps agricultural workers, 0:07:14.280 --> 0:07:18.240 promoting environmental sustainability, and serving as an educational site for 0:07:18.360 --> 0:07:22.400 black history and culture. The Old School campus was added 0:07:22.400 --> 0:07:25.480 to the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen seventy four. 0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:30.760 The original trade class shop, built in nineteen twelve, was 0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:34.560 rededicated in nineteen ninety nine to honor doctor York W. Bailey, 0:07:34.760 --> 0:07:36.520 who attended the Penn School as a child in the 0:07:36.560 --> 0:07:39.960 late eighteen hundreds, earned his medical degree from Howard University, 0:07:40.200 --> 0:07:45.040 and returned home to become Saint Helena's first black physician. Today, 0:07:45.160 --> 0:07:47.960 the shop houses a museum, the showcases and archive of 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:51.360 rare photographs of African Americans, as well as artifacts related 0:07:51.400 --> 0:07:56.960 to Glagichi history and culture. In twenty sixteen, Penn's then 0:07:57.000 --> 0:08:00.840 executive director, doctor Rodell Lawrence wrote for The Hill quote, 0:08:01.360 --> 0:08:04.680 most Americans came from somewhere else to this continent, and 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:07.320 Penn Center provides us with a direct link to the 0:08:07.320 --> 0:08:11.960 African origins of slaves that occupied America's southeastern seaboard. It 0:08:12.040 --> 0:08:14.320 is a window to a place in which many African 0:08:14.320 --> 0:08:17.200 Americans emerged from bondage and set out on a new 0:08:17.280 --> 0:08:20.559 journey as free men and women. It is a place 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:24.760 and a time to celebrate. Penn Center vividly embodies the 0:08:24.800 --> 0:08:28.520 American ideal of liberty and justice for all, and in 0:08:28.560 --> 0:08:34.360 every sense is a true historic national monument. To that end, 0:08:34.480 --> 0:08:38.160 President Barack Obama named a swath of Beaufort County, South Carolina, 0:08:38.240 --> 0:08:41.520 including the Penn Center, a national historical monument to the 0:08:41.520 --> 0:08:44.840 Reconstruction Era, a week before he left office in January 0:08:44.920 --> 0:08:48.680 of twenty seventeen. It's now part of the Reconstruction Era 0:08:48.920 --> 0:08:54.480 National Historic Park managed by the National Park Service. Today 0:08:54.559 --> 0:08:56.920 you can visit the center to explore the museum and 0:08:57.080 --> 0:09:01.000 take a tour. Penn hosts lots of local events too, 0:09:01.400 --> 0:09:05.040 including the Heritage Days Festival in early November of every year, 0:09:05.559 --> 0:09:09.959 celebrating the area's Gllageechee cultural legacy with an educational symposium, 0:09:10.240 --> 0:09:14.440 a space for artists and authors, craft and genealogy workshops, music, 0:09:14.840 --> 0:09:22.800 and a fish fry and oyster roast. Today's episode is 0:09:22.800 --> 0:09:25.680 based on the article Pen Center, a little known haven 0:09:25.760 --> 0:09:28.160 of the Civil Rights Movement on how stuffworks dot com, 0:09:28.200 --> 0:09:31.680 written by Kerry Tatreu. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio 0:09:31.760 --> 0:09:34.280 in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com and is produced 0:09:34.280 --> 0:09:37.800 by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit 0:09:37.840 --> 0:09:41.080 the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to 0:09:41.120 --> 0:09:52.880 your favorite shows.