A few miles outside of Beaufort is the Penn Center. The building pictured is where Martin Luther King Jr. often spent time to get away from his many headaches and detractors. It was in this building he wrote much of his I Have a Dream speech. They could use some help with upkeep.
Here's the description from their homepage:
Tucked in the heart of the South Carolina Sea Islands surrounded by
glimmering marshes and nestled beneath the silvery moss-draped limbs of
massive live oaks, is Penn Center - the site of the former Penn School,
one of the country's first schools for freed slaves. It is one of the
most significant African American historical and cultural institutions
in existence today. Penn Center is located on St. Helena Island, one of
the most beautiful and historically distinct of the South Carolina Sea
Islands, and at the heart of Gullah culture. The 50- acre historic
campus of Penn School was designated a National Historic Landmark
District in 1974, and is the only African American landmark district in
the nation. Established 150 years ago in 1862 as Penn School, an
experimental program to educate Sea Island slaves at the beginning of
the Civil War, it is the oldest and most persistent survivor of the Port
Royal Experiment. The two founders were Northern missionaries: Laura M.
Towne, a Unitarian from Pennsylvania, and her friend, Ellen Murray, a
Quaker from Rhode Island, who spent the next 40 years of their lives
serving the people of St. Helena in so many ways, in spite of numerous
severe hardships. Charlotte Forten (1862-1864) of Philadelphia was the
first Northern African American teacher at Penn. Upon Ms. Towne’s death
in 1901, the school became incorporated under a Board of Trustees, and
was heralded as a showplace as the new Penn Normal, Agricultural and
Industrial School, influenced by the Hampton Institute, until it closed
in 1948.
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