Celebrating Freedmen of the South

In 1862 when the plantation owners fled when the union ships arrived and the slaves were left on the island on their own, they became freedmen and the Penn School was founded. This center not only became a place of formal education for previously enslaved West Africans on the island, but it became so much more – a community. Penn School may have begun as just a place to develop reading, writing and mathematics skills, but the freedmen were also taught land ownership and industrial trade, which are valuable lessons.

Devotion towards the Penn School and now the Penn Center is incredible. When it first began, volunteerism from other places was difficult because many people not from the area were not used to the conditions and were not able to resist malaria so the people that did were courageous and must have been very dedicated for taking the risk. In 1864-1865 when the school became private and required tuition, students really worked to stay at Penn School. Some sold baskets that they weaved to raise the tuition money.

“Social support may come from… community institutions,” which in this case would be the school (Billingsley 1992: 312). Lincoln Normal School was founded by a group of freedmen similar to the Penn Center, but in this case, African American men were trying to find ways to provide education for their children. The Currys were former slaves and had all of their children attend the Lincoln Normal School. At this institution, black children were encouraged to dream and become exactly who they wanted to be, which is a very experience that many black children have faced in the more modern education systems in America. Similar to the Penn School, Coretta Scott King said that teachers of the other freedmen school were extremely committed and really wanted to make a difference in these children’s lives (Billingsley 1992: 317).

Today, many African Americans are faced with those teachers that do not care as much and are not pushing them to be the best that they can possibly be. “The actions and relationships among educators [are] how these factors promote an environment of failure or success for African American students in urban [schools] (Lewis and Moore 2008: 125).

“What people make of their places is closely connected to what they make of themselves as members of society and inhabitants of the earth,” Keith Basso says in his book, Wisdom Sits in Places (Basso 1996: 54). I got this strong sense of place from how connected the people were to the Penn School and how they continue to be very devoted to not only preserving the history, but celebrating all that has been done for the freedmen of the South. Most other historically important places are preserved in ways that just turn it into a museum, but Penn Center continues to embrace all that it has done for African American education in our society.

Works Cited

Basso, Keith. Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache. University of New Mexico Press.

Billingsley, Andrew. 1992. “Stumbling Blocks and Stepping Stones: Traditional African-American Family Values.” pp 312-333 in Climbing Jacob’s Ladder: The Enduring Legacy of African American Families. New York, New York, Touchstone.

Lewis, C. W., & Moore III, J. L. 2008. “African American Students in K-12 Urban Educational Settings” Urban Education, 43(2): 123-126.