Today’s news may be filled with the woes of a failing educational system, but 150 years ago a coherent educational system for African-Americans didn’t even exist, especially in the South. The Penn School, which has evolved into the modern-day Penn Center, was a pioneering force in changing that. It’s that legacy that will be celebrated this week on June 23 and 24.
Part of the Port Royal Experiment of 1862, so named for the main harbor off the coast of the South Carolina Sea Islands, which was among the first to fall to Union forces, the Penn Center was the educational component to a program that also focused on cultivating cotton with former slaves. Hailed as an early example of the federal government collaborating with philanthropic organizations to target African-Americans, the Port Royal Experiment brought many Northerners to the Sea Islands in a non-military capacity even before the Civil War ended.
The wealthy Laura Matilda Towne, who arrived in the area in April, 1862, was one of them. Towne, who was born in Pittsburgh but lived in Philadelphia where efforts to educate black children were not unusual even in that time, established the Penn School, named for William Penn, the Quaker leader who founded Pennsylvania, with her lifelong friend Ellen Murray in June 1862. But Towne was not a Quaker; she was a member of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia.
Operating out of the Oaks Plantation, the school started with nine students but grew large enough to move to Brick Church and then to its own location across the street where it still stands today. Penn School’s first African-American teacher, Charlotte Forten, came from Philadelphia shortly after the school started and taught there until 1864. The well-respected Forten, who later became Charlotte Forten Grimké, wrote of her experiences in the essays “Life on the Sea Islands,” published in the May and June 1864 editions of Atlantic Monthly.
Insightful information about her time at Penn School can also be found in The Journal of Charlotte L. Forten: A Free Negro in the Slave Era. “We went into the school, and heard the children read and spell. The teachers tell us that they have made great improvement in a very short time, and I noticed with pleasure how bright, how eager to learn many of them seem,” she writes Wednesday, October 29, 1862, shortly after arriving to St. Helena.
As for her teaching, she shares in the entry dated Thursday, November 13, 1862, that she “Talked to the children a little while to-day [sic] about the noble Toussaint [L’Ouverture]. They listened very attentively. It is well that they sh’ld [sic] know what one of their own color c’ld [sic] do for his race. I long to inspire them with courage and ambition (of a noble sort,) and high purpose.”
For forty years, Towne, who was also a homeopathic physician, ran the school with Murray, attending to educational, medical, social, even spiritual needs, until her death in 1901. Fortunately, prior to Towne’s death, moves had already begun to ensure the school’s survival. Hampton Institute took over, operating the school as the Penn Normal, Industrial, and Agricultural School.
It was a school until 1948. In 1951, it officially began focusing on broader social services for African-Americans as Penn Community Services, Inc. During the early 1960s, the Penn Center hosted leaders of Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In fact, Dr. King and others gathered at the Penn Center just before the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. They met at the Penn Center regularly until 1967. Dr. King lodged in Gantt Cottage. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Peace Corps regularly met there as well.
In 1974, the Penn Center’s 50-acre campus became a National Historic Landmark District. Towne embraced Gullah culture, which modern historians agree greatly retained its original African heritage in language, crafts and other important ways, while running the school. So, today, that heritage is at the heart of the Penn Center. Former Penn Center Executive Emory Campbell was critical to elevating the importance of Gullah culture. During his tenure in the 1980s, the Hilton Head native and author of Gullah Cultural Legacies worked diligently on establishing a connection with Sierra Leone in particular.
Named for a Penn School graduate who became the first black medical doctor to serve the area, the York W. Bailey Museum, which operates from Monday to Saturday, sprouted up in 1971 to preserve the Penn School’s history as well as the cultural heritage of the Sea Islands. Meanwhile, the Laura M. Towne Archives and Library, which is by appointment only, has prints of “one of the oldest collections of photographs of African Americans in the country,” as well as Towne’s personal diary and other archival materials dating back to the school’s early days.
Interestingly, Towne was committed to land rights for the former slaves; today that spirit continues through the Land Use and Environmental Education Program, which is needed to help descendants hold on to their now-valuable land.
Welcoming over 10,000 visitors a year, the Penn Center, which has 19 buildings in all and a menu of Gullah meals, serves as a critical link to an important era in this nation’s history, documenting and preserving a people’s desire to better not just themselves, but the world in general. Committed white and black educators helped build Penn Center into an important institution that not only prepped former slaves for a bright future, but also ensured that future would one day reflect and draw strength from their audacity to even try.
Follow Ronda Racha Penrice on Twitter at @rondaracha