Before the emancipation there first had to be an education
It started as an experiment that grew into an establishment
Abandoned slaves without a place to call home
were left out in a dangerous world to roam
Because of the Penn center because of every one of the mentors
freedmen were now prepared for a world they could reenter
We can read and We can earn
The tables, yes, We can turn
We wield the tools of knowledge
to now fight back against our bondage
The white man will need me
and that was straight from Booker T.
Never take away my identity
it is who I am it is part of me
Do not forget the Gullah
and Never drown out my Geechee
This sea island is my community
I will preserve it and protect it
Never allow it to be neglected
Penn Center was a producer
of a brighter and hopeful future.
Accompanying Statement to Poem
At first I wanted to do the photo collage for this project, but I thought about it after the trip and felt that I could possibly write something semipoetic explaining what the Penn Center was and what they did. The Penn Center is one of the most significant African American educational institutions in our history. It was founded as an experiment to see if freed slaves from the sea islands around Port Royal, which had previously been occupied by Union soldiers from the Civil War, could learn to read and write and gain necessary skills in order to cope with newly freed life. The school eventually adopted Booker T. Washington’s model of industrial training where freedmen could learn skills in order to make a living for themselves and money to take care of their families. There was a quote from Booker T. Washington that I really liked so I wanted to incorporate some of it into the poem. He was referring to how he wanted to push freed slaves to the greatest of their potential and that the white man would suffer without their knowledge and skill set. This is the quote: “so skilled in hand, so strong in head, so honest in heart, that the Southern white man cannot do without them.” After Penn Center ceased to be a school it became the center for community services. Penn Center became a meeting place for groups such as the Peace Corps, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Conscientious Objector Programs, and Martin Luther King Jr. in order to have training and strategic planning in a safe and protected environment during the Civil Rights Movement. Penn Center was an agency for teaching self sufficiency and for preserving the local culture and community of the sea island. I wrote about not forgetting the Gullah because these are traditions that are becoming bogged down because of constant increase of tourists and the building of resorts on the sea islands that threaten land that has been owned by Gullah families since emancipation. Penn Center has remained an extremely important agency for supporting and keeping the Gullah culture alive. The Gullah culture has become a symbol for African American cultural pride throughout the United States. It is crucial that it remains alive and well in order to continue a “brighter and hopeful” future. It instills unity and pride between black communities throughout the country and that should remain to be protected and encouraged.