St. Helena Island

This peaceful island, located five miles east of Beaufort, is rich with Gullah culture and history. St. Helena Island is home to the Penn Center, one of the first schools in America for freed slaves. The Penn Center has preserved much of the Island's African-American history and culture through collections, historical documentation, oral histories, musical recordings and handicrafts. It was in a cottage on the campust that Martin Luther King Jr. drafted his famous "I Have a Dream Speech". Just up the road from the Penn Center is the Chapel of Ease, the tabby remains of a church constructed between 1742 and 1747.