Photos: Booker T. Washington High School Open House

Former students and teachers, family and friends walked the halls of the auditorium building at Booker T. Washington High School Saturday, reminiscing of days spent in one of Columbia’s first all-black public schools.    

The open house, which was hosted by the Booker T. Washington High School Foundation, was one of several events scheduled during the school's 39th renunion. Earlier in June the University of South Carolina, which acquired the Booker T. Washington after the school’s closing in 1974, sponsored a dedication ceremony on June 14.

Mattie Johnson, a 1959 graduate, was one of the hundreds of alumni who "came back home" to the institution she said molded her into the woman she is today.

"This school was the foundation of building character, motivating you to want to excel," Johnson said. 

Johnson said it wasn't happenstance that they were able to return to Booker T. Washington.

"This is God," Johnson said. "Nothing happens before its time and the time is right now."

"They could not have done a better thing for the state of South Carolina and the (city of) Columbia, in particular, than to do this," she said. "To come back to this is redeeming. It just brings back the love and respect."

The auditorium building, which was constructed in 1956, is the only remaining structure of the original Booker T. Washington campus.

The renovations totaling $2.2 million includes upgrades to the auditorium, a new entrance and front stairwell, an elevator and a return to the original brick on the exterior of the building. A large portion of the funds — $1.7 million — used to renovate the building came from Booker T. Washington graduate Rev. Dr. Solomon Jackson Jr.    

An adjacent multi-purpose classroom was named in honor Fannie Phelps Adams, 95, a 1934 Booker T. Washington graduate and longtime assistant principal at the school and Wheeler Hill resident. 

The halls of the building are home to 15 panels that chronicles different stages in the school's history as well as school and personal memorabilia.

Visitors can view text and images from the school's beginning in 1916 to desegregation and to its closing in 1974.

Some of the school's most well-known graduates and educators include Adams; C. A. Johnson, the first principal; Celia Dial Saxon, a 1877 graduate of the South Carolina Normal School; J. Andrew Simmons, a Fisk University graduate and the founder of Booker T. Washington’s John Works Chorus; civil rights activists Septima Clark and Modjeska M. Simkins; and Judge Matthew J. Perry.   

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