ST. HELENA ISLAND, S.C. — The Penn Center, a historic African American cultural institution that once educated freed slaves on the South Carolina coast and later served as a retreat center for civil rights leaders such as the Rev. Martin Luther King, is celebrating its 150th anniversary.
The Penn Center on Saint Helena Island started in 1862 as one of the nation’s first schools for emancipated blacks and, at the turn of the 20th Century, became an agricultural and industrial school.