- In 1861, shortly after the fall of Fort Sumter, Union forces, thinking to gain a foothold in the South, attacked and conquered Beaufort and the surrounding Sea Islands.

When the conquering army reached Saint Helena island they found more than 10,000 slav on abandoned cotton plantations.

What happened next began a centu of testing social theories.

This is the story of how a small institution played a significant role in what became known as the Port Royal Experiment.

This is the story of Penn School of Saint Helena island.

♪ Jerusalem ♪ ♪ Jerusalem ♪ ♪ When the battle is over ♪ ♪ We shall wear a crown ♪ ♪ We shall wear a crown ♪ ♪ We shall wear a crown ♪ ♪ When the battle is over ♪ ♪ We shall wear a crown ♪ ♪ In the new Jerusalem ♪ ♪ When the battle is over ♪ ♪ We shall wear a crown ♪ - Regarding the issue of slavery the great historical benchmark was the Emancipation Proclamatio which officially made all the sl under the jurisdiction of the Federal Government.

It was signed by President Abrah on January 1st, 1863, but the first mass liberation of slaves in the South occurred almost a year and two months ear On November 7th, 1861, the blacks of Saint Helena island, South Carolina, awakened to the dawn of what was to be their last day under a master's whip.

At 9:25 A.M. the Union ship sailed toward the entrance of Port Royal Sound.

They were immediately fired upon from Confederate coastal batteri beginning with Fort Beauregard on Bay Pointe and Fort Walker on Hilton Head i The Union flagship, the USS Wabash, under the command of Commodore Samuel Francis Du Pont, led the Federal Armada.

The ship's guns raped the Fort at Bay Pointe with cannon fire and with picture perfect precision turned in formation and maneuvered toward Hilton Hea The booming of gunfire as it rolled over the islands created confusion and hasty preparations for evacuation.

Slaves abandoned their duties and came running in from the fie They found their masters packing what little they could to flee t After three passes by the Union the flags on the Confederate Fort were lowered in surrender.

A group of Confederate wives and daughters were anxiously waiting here on the veranda of the Thomas B. Chaplin home known as Tombee Plantation.

When they saw the Confederates s they followed the previous instructions given to them by their men folk.

They gathered together their nec bade farewell to their plantatio and fled to the mainland.

Many were never to return to the With the departure of their whit the slaves were faced with a sit for which they were totally unpr They were unofficially free.

However, they were neither slave nor free man because they were considered to be contraband property and therefore subject to the Federal Government.

They were abandoned property of an enemy to the Union.

It would take the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by President Lincoln to make them completely free under Federal Law.

And this wasn't to happen for another year.

Federal Treasury Secretary, Salmon P. Chase, had assumed responsibility for t and its thousands of inhabitants Chase had emerged as the leading anti-slavery exponent within the council of the Presid He had the unenviable task of trying to raise revenue to support the war.

Now as concerned as he was with the welfare of the people he was equally concerned with sa the partially harvested cotton c He knew that anything that he co would aid in the war effort.

Now Sea Island cotton was well r for its long fiber and he knew that the crop would bring a good price in the open market and this revenue would add great to the needed Union war chest.

His only problem was he had to get it harvested.

With the help of contraband labor the Union would get the cotton to market to help finance the war.

For the first time in their lives the former slaves would be promised wages for thei By so doing the Sea Island nativ were changed dramatically.

The Port Royal Experiment had begun, albeit inadvertently.

The federal government's handling of the cotton harvest on Saint Helena island began almost a century of testing social theories.

Conservative economists had long that blacks wouldn't work if left to their own devices.

Liberal economists had been waiting for an opportunity to disprove this theory, believing in the superiority of free labor.

What better way to do that than on an island filled with former slaves right in the South's backyard?

This plantation house at Coffin served as one of the headquarter for the Port Royal Experiment.

Northern educators would arrive here to manage the education and relief activities of the isl And one of the new arrivals was Laura M. Towne.

She was an abolitionist from Salem, Massachusetts and worked as a representative of the Philadelphia Port Royal Experiment mission, in charge of sending supplies to She came to Beaufort in April of and worked for a while with the government officials.

However, she soon became tired of the petty bureaucracy and formed her own program of education for the Islanders which would improve their way of Laura Towne began teaching at the Oaks Plantation on Saint Helena island in this v This wall was covered with slate and all seven feet were used as a blackboard.

The first class consisted of nine pupils, all adults, but by the end of the month the class had grown to 80.

And this necessitated moving to a brick church which had been used by white congregations before the war.

The early days showed great prom but initially Laura Towne had to with some unexpected priorities, mainly the ill health of the Isl She had received some medical tr and in the beginning most of her time was spent tending the sick.

She battled a smallpox epidemic and the reoccurring yellow fever In June of 1862, Laura Towne was joined by Ellen Murray, a Canadian who came to assist with teaching.

The lifestyle of slavery had been a pitiful, low standard of living.

The goal of Laura Towne and Ellen Murray was to bring island culture in line with dominant American norms and It was clear that this would not be an easy task.

In 1864, the Pennsylvania Friedman's Association sent a prefabricated, three roomed schoolhouse to the island.

It was landed at the Oaks Planta and brought by wagon to this sit where the land had been purchased from Hasting Gantt.

This was the first school in the South to be devoted exclusively for the use of forme Laura Towne gave the school a fine brass bell, a replica of the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia.

The replica had the inscription, "Proclaim liberty."

And the school was named Penn Sc in honor of Pennsylvania's founder William Penn.

So the Penn Schoolhouse became the Island's first standalone school.

The curriculum of those early da concentrated on academics.

But through the years other subjects were added to help meet the needs of the struggling community.

Classes began to include trainin in homemaking, agriculture and industrial arts.

The training in agriculture was because second to education, the black people wanted land.

They felt that true freedom meant farming their own soil.

In 1864 the Federal Government sold 20 acre plots of land for a dollar and a quart to heads of families of the Afri Now many seized this opportunity and quickly established themselves as farmers.

When Penn School began, there was a great deal of national interest because it promised to help the black people develop their own capabilities.

Many southerners feared that if left to themselves the Sea Island blacks would revert to the cultural practices of their ancestors.

The growing successes of Penn School graduates proved that this fear was absolute nons For 40 years Laura Towne and Ellen Murray kept to their labors at Penn School.

Very little has been written about their accomplishments because no records were kept, the only record being Ellen Murray's diary.

And with the passage of time the in the school waned as one by one the Northern relief associations disbanded.

But Laura Towne fought to keep the school open.

She often paid the teachers with her own money and called for financial support from her family in Massachusetts These two women, Laura Towne and Ellen Murray, were a powerful influence upon t of the Sea Islanders.

Not only were the blacks taught but they were also taught the importance of saving money and the necessity for very careful habits of crop husbandry In 1900 Laura Towne fell ill.

Fearing that the Penn School would close after her death she called for assistance from t who, at that time, was considere to be the leading authority on black education.

Hollis Burke Frissell was princi of Hampton Institute in Virginia where the curriculum emphasized industrial education.

He felt that the Penn School would give him an opportunity to prepare a program of industrial education which would benefit the entire rural south.

Two months after meeting with Frissell, Laura Towne died and with her death an era was en Frissell breathed life into the old Penn School.

Due to the lack of administrative attention and funding the school had reached only a small percentage of the Island's black population But Frissell's intent immediately became clear, he had the school incorporated and he established a board of tr Now almost overnight Penn School became an offshoot of Hampton Institute.

Frissell's intent was twofold, to continue and emphasize agricultural education and to reform the school system.

Now the fact that the former was very prominent in his mind is shown that when the new charter went into effect the school was renamed Penn Normal, Industrial and Agricultural School.

Frissell hoped to encourage the people to stay on the island and develop a farming community.

For this he enlisted the former from Hampton, P. W. Dawkins, to in the agriculture experiments.

Now Dawkins organized the men in farmer's conferences and he developed a school farm to demonstrate the latest agricultural methods, particularly the use of horses, and even cattle, for plowing.

Up to this time the method of plowing on the island was by the very heavy hand hoe p and this made for backbreaking labor in the fields.

Dawkins also encouraged the planting of food crops.

His efforts wouldn't be enough and his school farm was something short of a failure because the land was sand and the crops wouldn't grow.

Another problem was that Ellen Murray didn't understand the value of agricultural and industrial education.

She had been running the school since the death of Laura Towne, and she simply felt that simple was the key to moral development To her all that industrial education meant was to mend and to sew, to hammer and to saw, to plant and to reap.

She didn't understand the valuab that the farming education would particularly in self reliance.

Three years later in 1906, Rossa Belle Cooley, a teacher from the Hampton Insti replaced Ellen Murray as princip Ellen Murray became only a figur she was allowed to preside only at the beginning of the weekly sessions.

At the closing of Penn School in the spring of 1906 she made a pathetic address to the studen saying that she had been driven out of her work by the rich board of trustees.

But shortly after this speech her work of 40 years came to an end.

She fell ill of yellow fever and she died on January 13th, 19 At her graveside one of her old paid a most worthy tribute to this woman who had spent and dedicated most of her adult to the Sea Island blacks.

He's recorded as having said, "What we is, what we has and what we've done, all, all is done by her."

Now Ellen Murray and her colleague Laura Towne had helped the Sea Island blacks rise from In the 1900s no one else could appreciate the improvements made by Penn School more than El because no one else could remember the desolation that she had observed when she first arrived on the island 40 years earlier.

No one could contrast the present with the past.

Now certainly her methods were o but what was more hurtful to her was the way she felt that she had been cast out of he and passed over.

P. W. Dawkins resigned, dissatis because he had been passed over by the Board and that a second woman, Rossa Belle Cooley, would be the principal.

His replacement was another Hamp by the name of Joshua Enoch Blan Blanton immediately tackled the abandoned school farm and made it produce through sheer determination.

Blanton was a man whose jovial m and style in dealing made him we by all the Sea Islanders, black He introduced the idea of crop r and he used a miniature one acre farm at Penn School to dramatize the method.

Now at first this idea was met with skepticism but when the one acre farm produ 35 bushels of corn no one could with that when the average Sea Island yield was 16 bushels an acre.

He taught the development of poultry and livestock, he encouraged truck farming and the planting of winter crops Indeed Blanton's miniature farm at Penn School was a tremendous success.

During World War I many of the Saint Helena men were drafted into the army.

Joshua Blanton was sent to Europe as a morale effort for the black soldiers who were so far from home.

Some of the teachers were drafte and this crippled, in part, the Penn School's effort.

But the rewarding thing from all this lay in the letters sent back by the graduates of Pe who told how much their education had meant to them and how it had set them above others of their race.

For example, Benjamin Barnwell w after several days of army intelligence testing that he had quickly been elevated through the ranks and that he was convinced that more education was needed for all black people.

He wrote.

- [Benjamin] I am thankful that I am connected with the great hosts that are looking for greater things in human life.

I shall return to Penn School to render services to my people of the Island.

- Barnwell would return here to Penn School where he became the second black in the nation to be appointed by the United States Department of Agriculture as a demonstration agent.

After World War I, Miss.

Cooley had to take the school in a new direction.

She realized that the Penn School was out of step with the agricultural life of th Miss.

Cooley arranged classes around specific periods of the year.

For example, in autumn, for two weeks the students would be allowed to help in the sweet potato harvest.

This annual event would come to be known as Potato Week.

In the years to come Penn School would face many challenges.

Between 1917 and 1920 70% of the island cotton crop was lost to the boll weevil.

During the '30s the Islanders weathered the Great Depression as best they could.

And to make matters worse there were droughts, hurricanes and severe epidemics which continued to plague the Is During World War II the greatest problem facing the island was the lack of able bodied men and work the Saint Helena farms.

As they left to serve in the armed forces a whole new world was open to them and after they had finished their stint in the military many chose not t The glamor and excitement of city life made farming on the island seem dull by compa The '40s was to be the last decade for the Penn School, as far as its original functions were concerned.

On May 6th, 1948, Penn Normal, Industrial and Agricultural School became Penn Community Services.

The school stopped accepting new as a task of education was taken by the state and county Boards of Education.

So with the graduating class of the Port Royal Experiment came t Through the years the Penn Community Services has been concerned with communit planning and development.

This location received national notice in the '60s when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. his Southern Christian Leadership conferences here.

This was one of the few facilities available in the Sout at that time for such a biracial The historic March on Washington of 1963 was partly planned here at the Gantt building on the Penn Center campus.

In 1974 the Penn Center campus was designated a national historic landmark.

Now although the school, the first in the south established for freed slaves, no longer exis the ideals of freedom, which first came alive here, still exists because Penn Center is now a training center for the Peace Corps.

And it's very fitting that here in the area where a school began for freed slaves of Africa young Americans now prepare to go to Africa to help the underprivileged.

Experts in the social sciences d as to whether or not the Penn Sc accomplished its initial goals.

Be that as it may, as we visit the campus today and walk among the stately live oaks and palmettos where Laura Towne and Ellen Murray once passed, we are aware of the enduring spirit of Penn Center.

It's a sense of caring, of concern, of a human will, which in the face of impossible odds created an institution.

The first of its kind in the South to help blacks understand their own social and intellectual potential.

It's here in the spirit of those who have gone before and in the presence of this gene that dreams become reality.

It's here that the Sea Island blacks have been able to realize their own strength, their own identity, and, most importantly, their own - [Martin] When we let freedom r when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last!

Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free ♪ When the battle is over ♪ ♪ We shall wear a crown ♪ ♪ We shall wear a crown ♪ ♪ We shall wear a crown ♪ ♪ When the battle is over ♪ ♪ We shall wear a crown ♪ ♪ In the new Jerusalem ♪ ♪ When the battle is over ♪ ♪ We shall wear a crown ♪ ♪ We shall wear a crown ♪ ♪ We shall wear a crown ♪ ♪ When the battle is over ♪ ♪ We shall wear a crown ♪ ♪ In the new Jerusalem ♪ ♪ When the battle is over ♪ ♪ We shall wear a crown ♪ ♪ We shall wear a crown ♪ ♪ We shall wear a crown ♪ ♪ When the battle is over ♪ ♪ We shall wear a crown ♪ ♪ In the new Jerusalem ♪ ♪ When the battle is over ♪ ♪ We shall wear a crown ♪ ♪ We shall wear a crown ♪ ♪ We shall wear a crown ♪ ♪ When the battle is over ♪ ♪ We shall wear a crown ♪ ♪ In the new Jerusalem ♪ ♪ In the new Jerusalem ♪ ♪ In the new ♪ ♪ In the new ♪ ♪ Jerusalem ♪