Penn Center and York W. Bailey Museum

Located on beautiful St. Helena Island, at the very heart of Gullah culture, surrounded by glimmering marshes, and nestled beneath the silvery moss-draped limbs of massive live oaks… is Penn Center.

The campus of the former Penn School, one of the nation’s first schools for formerly enslaved people, is one of the most significant African American institutions in existence today. This historic and cultural institution is a National Historic Landmark District and comprises two of the four sites in Reconstruction Era National Park.

The Penn Center History and Culture Program preserves and interprets the Sea Islands and Lowcountry African American culture known as Gullah Geechee. The Penn Center is the jewel in its crown—a 50-acre National Historic Landmark District including the Courtney P. Siceloff Welcome Center, the York W. Bailey Museum housing the onsite Penn School Collection, and the Penn School Papers archived at the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill.