[1] Darrah Hall and Brick Baptist Church on the campus were declared part of Reconstruction Era National Monument in January 2017.

The Penn Center is located about one mile south of Frogmore on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

[5] At the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, Union Army forces quickly captured Saint Helena Island, prompting the local plantation owners to flee.

The institution then became the Penn Center, with directors including Howard Kester, Courtney Siceloff, John Gadson, Joe McDomick and Emory Campbell, and continued an educational mission for the island's preschoolers and adults, as well as maintaining a museum, cultural center, and conference meeting space.

Penn Center played an important part in the civil rights movement, as one of the few places in the Jim Crow south where interracial groups could meet.

A Retreat Center on the water was planned as a safer place for Dr. King to stay, but it was not completed before his death in 1968.