After becoming Penn Community Center in 1953, the institution began to focus on social issues affecting the well-being of the native islanders. This expanded to African Americans as a whole in the 1960s, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and other civil rights organizations began coming to the island to have meetings at the Frissell Community House, one of several buildings that students and community members had built on the campus.
"Penn Center." SC Encyclopedia. Accessed 15 April 2021. https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/penn-center/
