The Penn Center provided critical educational facilities to Gullah slaves, who are are the descendants of enslaved Africans in what US states?
Penn Center (Saint Helena Island, South Carolina) The Penn Center, formerly the Penn School, is an African-American cultural and educational center near Frogmore, South Carolina, on Saint Helena Island. Founded in 1862 by missionaries from Pennsylvania, it was the first school founded in the Southern United States specifically for the education of African-Americans. It provided critical educational facilities to Gullah slaves freed after plantation owners fled the island, and continues to fulfill an educational mission. The campus was designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1974. Darrah Hall and Brick Baptist Church on the campus were declared part of Reconstruction Era National Monument in January 2017.
Robert Pleasants Robert Pleasants (1723–1801) was an American educator and abolitionist. He was born in Henrico County, Virginia and became a plantation owner and operator of Robert Pleasants & Co., a consignment tobacco exporting company. His father, John Pleasants, also a Quaker and member of the Curles Neck Meeting, wrote a will asking his heirs to free over 500 slaves when they reached 30 years of age. Contacts with the anti-slavery advocate Anthony Benezet and what became the Pennsylvania Abolition Society in 1774, spurred their commitment to the abolitionist movement.