Penn School Historic District, Frissell Community House, SC Route 37, 1 mile South of Frogmore, St. Helena Island, Frogmore

Source document Quoted word for word from HABS SC,7-FROG.V,11-. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

92 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive (State Road St. Helena Island, Frogmore vicinity, Beaufort County, South Carolina. The building is located at latitude: longitude: This point was obtained on January 9, using Google Earth There is no restriction on its release to the public.

Source document Quoted word for word from HABS SC,7-FROG.V,11-. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

The Frissell Community House was constructed in on St. Helena Island, a center of African American culture. It served as a library, kitchen, and dining room for day students at Penn School. Penn School, later Penn Center, was established during the Civil War as an institution to educate and train former enslaved persons and continued to serve the region s African American community through the Civil Rights era to the present. Description: The building is constructed from tabby (a mixture of sand, cement, and oyster shells) featuring a stucco fa ade with a series of double-door entries, each with arched transoms, on the east and west (front and rear) elevations. It also has a hipped tile roof and a bronze bas-relief on the fa ade.

The interior features an original fireplace mantle and wood panels with chair rail, a large community room with a stage and exposed trusses, and a beam roof. History: Penn School was established in shortly after Union forces took control of St. Helena and the other South Carolina sea islands following the outbreak of the Civil War. These islands have been home to the Gullah people, descendants of Africans who have maintained especially strong ties to ancestral cultural traditions. The white missionaries who founded the institution intended to educate former enslaved persons, train them in agriculture and the trades, and acculturate them into white society.

According to a history of the site, Penn School was born of the abolitionist spirit, one that took firm root during Reconstruction and continued into the twentieth century. Even when the rest of the nation accepted segregation and turned its back on African American rights, Penn Center continued as a place where blacks and whites could interact with and learn from one another. That abolitionist spirit shows the link between Reconstruction and the civil rights movement. 1 Frissell Community House was constructed in by Penn School students, and live oak trees in the back were 1 Orville Vernon Burton with Wilbur Cross, Penn Center: A History Preserved (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1. PENN SCHOOL HISTORIC DISTRICT, FRISSELL COMMUNITY HOUSE HABS No. (Page 3) planted by students as well.

The building was used as a library, kitchen, and dining room for day students. Currently, the auditorium continues to be a gathering space for social activities, spiritual nourishment, and public information meetings for the St. Helena community. In the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. met with civil rights activists in Frissell to strategize during Freedom Schools and the Poor People s campaign. The building is named after Horace Burke Frissell, who served as president of the Hampton Institute and chairman of the Penn School Board of Trustees, in the early twentieth century.

Source document Quoted word for word from HABS SC,7-FROG.V,11-. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

Burton, Orville Vernon with Wilbur Cross. Penn Center: A History Preserved. Athens: University of Georgia Press, Penn Center of the Sea Islands Records, University Libraries Wilson Special Collections Library. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC. Related HABS, NR, listings, and NPS-issued historic structure reports. Historians: Annika Fischer and Anna Demkovitch, Georgia Institute of Technology School of Architecture.