Origins of Black History Month

The story of Black History Month begins in 1915, half a century after the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in the United States. That September, the Harvard-trained historian Carter G. Woodson and the prominent minister Jesse E. Moorland founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH), an organization dedicated to researching and promoting achievements by Black Americans and other peoples of African descent.

Born in 1875 in New Canton, Virginia, Woodson had worked as a sharecropper, miner and various other jobs during his childhood to help support his large family. Though he entered high school late, he made up for lost time, graduating in less than two years. After attending Berea College in Kentucky, Woodson worked in the Philippines as an education superintendent for the U.S. government. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Chicago before entering Harvard. In 1912, three years before founding the ASNLH, he became only the second African American (after W.E.B. DuBois) to earn a doctorate from that institution.

In 1915, Carter G. Woodson traveled to Chicago from his home in Washington, D.C. to take part in a national celebration of the 50th anniversary of emancipation.  He had earned his bachelor’s and master’s degree at the University of Chicago, and still had many friends there. As he joined the thousands of Black Americans overflowing from the Coliseum, which housed exhibits highlighting African American achievements since the abolition of slavery, Woodson was inspired to do more in the spirit of celebrating Black history and heritage. Before he left Chicago, he helped found the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH). A year later, Woodson singlehandedly launched the Journal of Negro History, in which he and other researchers brought attention to the achievements of Black Americans.

Known today as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), the group sponsored a national Negro History week in 1926, choosing the second week of February to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. The event inspired schools and communities nationwide to organize local celebrations, establish history clubs and host performances and lectures.

https://www.history.com/news/the-man-behind-black-history-month

"MLK's hopes and dreams an old SC story"

The Island Packet

Reprint written by David Lauderdale

Martin Luther King, Jr. laid a troubled head to rest during his last visit to Penn Center. It was during his final Southern Christian Leadership Conference staff retreat at Penn Center in 1967. By then, he was the figurehead for America’s red-hot civil rights movement, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, an “I have a dream” icon — and a worried man, loudly rebuffed beneath our towering oaks by his own lieutenants about what to do next. It was right after Thanksgiving, and King had only four months to live. But on this night, he could rest in a safe and secluded corner of South Carolina in a simple wooden cottage named for Hastings Gantt. The link between these two men who never knew each other — one a giant, the other an all-but-forgotten former slave — was cemented in 2017 when President Barack Obama signed a proclamation establishing the Reconstruction Era National Monument in Beaufort County.

Gantt was a hero of that era, an example of what could come of freedom as he bought land, raised cotton, made money, bought more land, was repeatedly elected to the state House of Representatives, and became a philanthropist, giving 50 acres to the Penn School so it could grow from its meager beginnings in 1862 as one of America’s first schools for freedmen.

Those freedoms began in Beaufort County, as the president noted. And they lasted longer and left more remnants of its grand experiment in the sandy, windswept soil by the sea. The president’s proclamation says, “Ultimately, the unmet promises of Reconstruction led to the modern civil rights movement a century later.” And Martin Luther King Jr. stepped into South Carolina history at Gantt Cottage.

Who’s Who

King visited St. Helena’s Frogmore community five times between 1964 and 1967.

By that time, the school had become the Penn Community Center. Under the direction of the late Courtney and Elizabeth Siceloff, Quakers bent toward peace, it was a place of safety, a place of refuge, for black and white progressives fighting institutionalized Jim Crow racism at great personal risk. King came with what we see now as a who’s who of the civil rights movement, including Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson, Joan Baez and Hosea Williams.

The SCLC was just one of many groups to use the quiet campus of older buildings to plot radical strategies. At the time, it was one of the few places blacks and whites could meet or spend the night together. CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality), SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), the Southern Regional Council, the South Carolina Council on Human Relations, the World Peace Foundation, the NAACP, and the American Friends Committee were among those to come.

Septima Clark ran citizenship schools at Penn. It’s a remarkable chapter of American history detailed best in the 2014 book from the University of Georgia Press, “Penn Center: A History Preserved” by Orville Vernon Burton with Wilbur Cross.

“We were called ‘communists’ because we wanted to see things change,” Joseph McDomick Jr. said. The 78-year-old retired St. Helena Island magistrate was on the Penn staff at the time, and he well remembers the visits by King.

“It was a hush-hush kind of thing,” he said. “We certainly didn’t want anything to happen to him while he was here. When he would leave, we could kind of exhale.” It offered a time of relaxation. “When you saw a big crowd, you knew that’s where Dr. King was,” McDomick said. “He did kid and joke like anyone else.” But inside, King was strictly business.

What did he say?

Between the sweet music of Joan Baez, and the arm-crossing-arm swaying to “We Shall Overcome,” were lots of arguments. Detailed accounts of two Penn retreats in Taylor Branch’s book, “At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years 1965-68,” make it clear that the South Carolina retreats could be raucous. King let his lieutenants battle it out, saying it was natural for a group of outliers. But in the black power and white power backlash, King stood fast in his belief in non-violence. “Violence may murder the liar, but it doesn’t murder the lie,” King said at Penn. “It doesn’t establish truth ... Violence may go to the point of murdering the hater, but it doesn’t murder hate. It may increase hate.”

King also stood by his opposition to the Vietnam War, though some of his staff thought that was an unnecessary side trail for the movement. “All that I have said boils down to the conclusion that man’s survival is dependent upon man’s ability to solve the problems of racial injustice, poverty, and war,” he said. “At Penn Center, he called them ‘the inseparable triplets,’ ” Branch writes. And he prevailed against strong resistance to his Poor People’s Campaign to have the poor camp out in Washington so the powerful could actually see them.

King warned that the road ahead would be much harder. “It is necessary for us to realize that we have moved from the era of civil rights to the era of human rights ... when you deal with human rights, you are not dealing with something clearly defined in the Constitution,” Burton quotes King as saying at Penn in May 1967. “They are rights that are clearly defined by the mandates of humanitarian concern ... We are talking about a good, solid, well-paying job. We are talking about a good, sound, sanitary house. We are talking not merely about desegregated education, but we are talking about quality education.” King may not have known it, but in this South Carolina hideaway that now has gained the attention of the nation, he was channeling the hopes and dreams of Hastings Gantt.

Penn Center built a retreat cottage on its waterfront property specifically for King’s use but just as the construction was completed in 1968 he was assassinated. After his death the Penn Center staff found portions of his handwritten “I Have A Dream” speech in Gantt Cottage and turned them over to the King family. The link between MLK Jr. and Penn Center will always be honored and remembered.

A South Carolina Historical Legacy
An American Cultural Treasure

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. It is the site of the former Penn School, one of the country's first schools for formerly enslaved individuals.

Penn Center is one of the most significant African American historical and cultural institutions in existence today. We are 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. 

Penn Center receives high praise for its powerful history and impact! 

Trustee Deloris Pringle was interviewed by radio host Matt McNeil, AM 950, KTNF, Minneapolis/ St. Paul., Tuesday, August 24th. Please listen to this stunning presentation.        

https://soundcloud.com/user-587903571/deloris-pringle-with-matt-august24-2021

Deloris Pringle, trustee from the Penn Center in Beaufort, South Carolina joins Matt to discuss African-American history in South Carolina and the Penn Center's role in preservation efforts.

Sharing some exciting news! 

Penn Center was one of ten institutions selected for a grant funded initiative titled:

"Broadening Narratives."  Funds will be used to transform its York Bailey Museum and other visitor experiences across its 47-acre campus, create a new, onsite preservation and storage space that will safeguard the center’s artifacts; and establish a new director of exhibitions to guide the creation of exhibitions and interpretative experiences for discovering and sharing Gullah Geechee culture and history.

“This grant will allow us to continue to interpret, safeguard and share the heritage of the Gullah Geechee community. As the only African American National Historic Landmark District in the state of South Carolina, we have a unique opportunity to share Reconstruction history and to serve as national advocates for preserving Gullah Geechee culture. The support of the Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation allows us to continue this important work through new exhibitions and visitor experiences aimed at empowering and providing access to diverse audiences looking to understand our history.”

https://gddf.org/broadening-narratives-recipients/

Announcing ten projects funded by new "Broadening Narratives" grant initiative | Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation

GAYLORD AND DOROTHY DONNELLEY FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES COLLECTIONS PROJECTS FUNDED BY GROUNDBREAKING “BROADENING NARRATIVES” GRANT INITIATIVE TO ILLUMINATE UNDERREPRESENTED STORIES. Grants total $579,000 to ten organizations in Chicago and Lowcountry of South Carolina; Grant recipients to each receive a range of $20,000 to $100,000 to fund new projects

gddf.org

Join us on Saturday from 8:00am until 12:00noon for the Penn Center Farmers Market.  Vendors are welcome with no registration fee this season. We will have locally grown okra, zucchini, snap beans, sweet corn, watermelon, vine ripened tomatoes and more.

In accordance with Federal civil rights law and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) civil rights regulations and policies, the USDA, its Agencies, offices, and employees, and institutions participating in or administering USDA programs are prohibited from discriminating based on race, color, national origin, sex, disability, age, or reprisal or retaliation for prior civil rights activity in any program or activity conducted or funded by USDA.

Persons with disabilities who require alternative means of communication for program information (e.g. Braille, large print, audiotape, American Sign Language, etc.), should contact the Agency (State or local) where they applied for benefits. Individuals who are deaf, hard of hearing or have speech disabilities may contact USDA through the Federal Relay Service at (800) 877-8339. Additionally, program information may be made available in languages other than English.

To file a program complaint of discrimination, complete the USDA Program Discrimination Complaint Form, (AD-3027) found online at: http://www.ascr.usda.gov/complaint_filing_cust.html, and at any USDA office, or write a letter addressed to USDA and provide in the letter all of the information requested in the form. To request a copy of the complaint form, call (866) 632-9992. Submit your completed form or letter to USDA by:

(1)      mail: U.S. Department of Agriculture
                   Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights
                   1400 Independence Avenue, SW
                   Washington, D.C. 20250-9410;

(2)      fax: (202) 690-7442; or

(3)      email: program.intake@usda.gov.

This institution is an equal opportunity provider.

Penn Center to partner with University of Georgia on Mellon grant-funded community engagement project

The University of Georgia Willson Center for Humanities and Arts has received a $1 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to partner with Penn Center on a public humanities project for a period of at least five years. The partnership will support education and sharing among communities in the Sea Islands region of the Southeastern United States and students from UGA and its partner institutions.

Barbara McCaskill, professor of English and associate academic director of the Willson Center, and Nicholas Allen, who holds an endowed chair in humanities and directs the Willson Center, will lead the project, “Culture and Community at the Penn Center National Historic Landmark District,” in close coordination with Penn Center staff and community partners. Its range of programs will include community-based artist residencies, in-place studies for students at UGA and partner institutions, and a series of public conversations.

“This significant new grant will allow our students to engage with and learn from communities along the Southeastern coast,” said UGA President Jere W. Morehead. “The Willson Center is recognized nationally as a hub of excellence in the humanities and arts, and I look forward to watching the growth of this collaboration with Penn Center and the communities it serves.”

“Penn Center’s history encompasses every stage of the African American freedom struggle, from slavery, the Reconstruction and segregation to the present civil rights moment,” said McCaskill, who also serves as director of the Civil Rights Digital Library, as a member of the Penn Center board of trustees and an advisory board member of Penn’s multidisciplinary journal, Watch Night. “This new partnership will allow UGA’s humanities and arts students to interact creatively throughout the year with this coastal region’s historic and storied Black communities. Research projects will engage students and communities in conversations about climate change, cultural preservation, and social justice and equity issues in education, law, employment and housing.”

Marion Burns, Penn Center’s board chair and interim executive director, sees great potential in the partnership. “The project promotes two-way interactions between communities in the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor and academic institutions,” he said. “This is an opportunity for a new kind of approach for the arts and humanities that emphasizes community along with history, culture and heritage.”

The Mellon Foundation grant is the third in recent years for the Willson Center. A 2018 grant expanded the Willson Center’s Global Georgia Initiative to support humanities and arts research projects, and another in 2019 piloted a regional consortium of state flagship universities and public partners for the study of environmental humanities in coastal contexts.

“This opportunity to seed new learning experiences allows the Willson Center to grow the branches of inspiration and innovation that connect students across the region,” Allen said. “The continuing support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as well as that of the UGA Office of Research, helps us expand the meaning of inclusive and visionary programming, and to root our efforts in community alliance.”

Grant-funded activities, which will run through June 2025, will begin in early 2021 with calls for proposals for artists in residence, research residencies and place-based study classes.

“This partnership between Penn Center and the Willson Center will affirm UGA’s role as an innovative leader among public universities in place-based learning,” McCaskill said. “It builds upon and highlights the strengths of humanities and arts students as communicators, collaborators and engaged citizens of the state and region.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way Penn Center Inc is conducting daily activities, but our Mission and Vision remain the same.

Help us to continue providing assistance to our community by donating to Penn Center. Your donation is vital to the future of Penn Center. Your gift will make an important difference is our ability to continue rendering services to so many people through our public programs. Your donation is also tax deductible.

Online donation option can be found on our website (penncenter.com/donate)

Thanks for assisting Penn Center during this difficult economic time.

Bernie Wright - Interim Executive Director