The original Gantt Cottage located on the campus of Penn School, now known as Penn Center, was named after the ex-enslaved Hastings Gantt, who donated the original tract of land for Penn School to Laura Towne. It was destroyed by fire around 1940. The current house, built by students, is a replacement. Mr. Gantt was a businessman and politician. He served in the South Carolina Legislature as a representative from Beaufort during the Reconstruction period. During the 1960’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stayed at Gantt. Penn Center was one of the few places in the south where bi-racial groups could meet. Planning for the great Civil Rights “March on Washington” took place here as well as the writing of the "I Have a Dream" speech.
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^National Archives and Records Administration. (2017). South Carolina SP Penn Center Historic District. National Archives and Records Administration. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/118997169
^South Carolina Department of Archives and History. (n.d.). African American Historic Places in South Carolina. Home | SC Department of Archives and History. https://scdah.sc.gov/
^Power, T. J. (1993). Martin Luther King, Jr., The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Penn Center 1964-1967. Home | SC Department of Archives and History. https://scdah.sc.gov/
^Historic American Buildings Survey, C. (1933) Penn School Historic District, Benezet House, 1 mile South of Frogmore, Route 37, St Helena Island, Frogmore, Beaufort County, SC. South Carolina Beaufort County Frogmore, 1933. Documentation Compiled After. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/sc0774/.
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