Instructor

The West Virginia Symphony Orchestra and touring acts perform in the centerpiece of the Clay Center, Maier Foundation Performance Hall. This&nbsp;1,883 seat theater&nbsp;was built to offer visitors the best acoustical experience&nbsp;and views of the stage. Smaller performances occur within the Walker Theater, an intimate venue&nbsp;that can accommodate&nbsp;up to&nbsp;200&nbsp;guests.&nbsp;The&nbsp;Avampato Discovery Museum&nbsp;provides children and young adults with two floors of interactive science exhibits. There is also a planetarium, café,&nbsp;and a small&nbsp;art gallery that features selections from the museum's permanent collection&nbsp;as well as temporary&nbsp;exhibitions of works that the museum obtains on loan from other institutions. The Clay Center has been made possible by the generosity of hundreds of West Virginia families. The Center is named after its two largest benefactors, Lyell and Buckner Clay.&nbsp;These brothers established and operated Clay Communications and used the proceeds of their media company to establish the Clay Foundation. As of 2014, the Clay Foundation has provided nearly $60 million in funding to build and sustain the center. Lyell Clay owned several businesses in Charleston, including the Charleston Daily Mail. In 1987, Lyell Clay explained his belief that good fortune required good works in an article in that newspaper. "I really feel that we are trustees for all that which we are given in life," Lyell Clay explained.&nbsp;"If we’re lucky enough to make money instead of losing it, I think that charges us with a kind of fiduciary responsibility to do something with it." On street parking is usually available within two blocks of the Clay Center. The Clay Center offers a parking lot on Washington Street immediately across from the building.&nbsp;There is a $3/day charge to park in this lot.&nbsp;

This sculpture by Albert Paley is titled Hallelujah and is located at the front entrance of the Clay Center. Paley's work can also be seen at the entrance to the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC 

Website

The Clay Center for the Arts & Sciences of West Virginia is a venue for performing arts as well as a gallery for visual arts and a science museum for children of all ages. Regional and national acts perform at the Clay Center each month, as well as the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra. The Avampato Discovery Museum offers several floors of exhibits for children and young adults.  

Clay Center for the Arts & Sciences

This paint on brick mural was painted in 2008 on the rear of Charleston's Habitat for Humanity ReStore. Nine artists worked on the mural, with each one executing a single vignette. The artists are Andy King, Charly Hamilton, Kelly Huffman, Amanda Jane Miller, Rick Goosman, Mark Woolfe, Amy Williams, Rebecca Recco, and Dane Klingman. 

Home is Where the Art Is

Capitol Market sits where the New York Central freight house
once stood. New York Central was a combination of previously existing railroads
running through Charleston, WV: the Toledo and Ohio Cenral, the Kanawha and
Michigan, and the Kanawha and West Virginia Railroad. The Kanawha and Michigan,
completed in 1888, entered West Virginia at Point Pleasant and followed the 58
mile track down the Kanawha River to Charleston. The Kanawha and Michigan
eventually expanded both east and south with the purchase of the Charleston and
Gauley Railway. The Toledo and Ohio Central purchased both the Kanawha and
Michigan and the Kanawha and West Virginia in 1900. New York Central purchased
the Toledo and Ohio Central in 1938, and combined both the K&amp;M and the
K&amp;WV; in 1952, New York Central combined the Toledo and Ohio Central into
the system. 

The old New York Central Depot originally belonged to the
Kanawha and Michigan, along with the freight house. The New York Central
passenger depot was built in 1897, and was demolished in 1975. As the railyard
was falling into disrepair, the city of Charleston decided to give new life to
the freight house, as it was converted into an outdoor market and an indoor
collection of shops in 1997. Today, the eclectic collection of shops include
restaurants, wine shop, coffee shop, meat market, fresh produce/food store, and
more. Capitol Market continues to serve as an economic and cultural landmark in
Charleston.

Capitol Market is a commercial and social hub in Charleston, WV. It is housed within what was once the freight station of the Kanawha & Michigan Railroad, and is the sole surviving structure that was once part of a large marshaling yard and service center for the K&M Railroad.  Adjacent to the old freight depot/Capitol Market stood the now-demolished K& M passenger depot. When the Kanawha & Michigan RR came through the area in the late 1800s it reached Point Pleasant on the west and Gauley Bridge on the east.  After the freight & passenger depots were built in the late nineteenth century the area bustled with activity important to the economic growth of Charleston for decades.

Capitol Market

The Harden-Gilmore house was constructed in 1900 by an Italian immigrant and contractor, Dominic Minotti. Minotti also built the piers on the bridges that connect Kanawha City and South Charleston with Charleston. After several years of retirement, Minotti passed away in 1925. In the mid-1930s, Minotti’s wife passed away and the house became a boarding house for a brief period, and was then put up for sale. Elizabeth Harden Gilmore, the first woman to be a licensed funeral director in Kanawha County, purchased the home in 1947.Elizabeth Harden Gilmore bought the home, with her husband, when she was in her late 30s. They remodeled it to serve as both their home and funeral parlor, Harden and Harden Funeral Home. The ownership of the Black funeral home in Charleston, WV, gave Gilmore a sense of recognition as a leader in the Black community. Gilmore took this leadership seriously, and became a key figure in the civil rights movement in West Virginia. Gilmore fought for her daughter’s right to be admitted into Camp Anne Bailey. Her daughter’s Girl Scout troop was the first African American group to be admitted into the camp. Gilmore also co-founded the local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE, in 1958. Serving as the co-chairman and the executive secretary of CORE, Gilmore led the efforts of a sit-in at the local Diamond Department Store. After a year and a half long fight, Gilmore and CORE successfully convinced The Diamond to open their lunch counters to African-Americans. Elizabeth Harden Gilmore was active in an impressive number of civic organizations. She founded a women’s club in the early 1950s that opened and operated the first integrated day care center in Charleston. She served on the community welfare council and on the Executive Board of the Citizens Committee for a West Virginia Human Rights Law, a grassroots organization formed to achieve the passage of an enforceable civil rights law. Due to the efforts of that organization, the state civil rights law were amended in 1961. She was a member of the Charleston Chamber of Commerce (serving on their education task force), an adviser to the Volunteer Service Bureau, and a charter member of the Kanawha Valley Council of Human Relations. During her time on the council, she served as the group’s first Vice President, participated in their Panel of American Women (a public forum focused on race and religion), and worked to get African Americans into homes and neighborhoods that had excluded them in the past through the Clearing House for Open Occupancy Selection Effort. She also participated in the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. In 1969, Gilmore became the first African American appointed to the West Virginia Board of Regents, and eventually served as the vice president and then president. <blockquote>"I am convinced of the efficiency of direct action. If our people had used it a generation or two ago, we wouldn't be witnessing the things today that shock and sadden people of all races." - Elizabeth Harden Gilmore1</blockquote>

Elizabeth Harden Gilmore was a Charleston funeral director and a pioneer in the civil right movement in West Virginia. Gilmore was a leader and one of the founders of the local chapter of Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) that led sit-ins throughout Charleston. She also worked to secure the admission of African American Girl Scouts into the previously all-white Camp Anne Bailey. Gilmore led the first sit-in against the Diamond Department Store’s lunch counter in Downtown Charleston. Thanks to her leadership, the store opened the lunch counter to African American patrons in 1960. In 1988, Gilmore's home was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Efforts continue to restore the home and operate it in a way that honors Gilmore's legacy. 

Elizabeth Harden Gilmore House

In the 1900’s many African Americans traveled from rural southern states heading to Chicago, Detroit or Toledo. As they crossed the Appalachian mountain range, the city of Charleston, West Virginia was an accessible location because of the development of major US highways. &nbsp;Charleston had at the time a large African American population who owned most of their homes and ran Black businesses.&nbsp; The location of these homes and businesses was commonly referred to as “The Block”. &nbsp;Local persons reached out to those traveling and welcomed their re-location and contribution to the community. &nbsp;This “rich culturally diverse neighborhood was a 25-acre tract of land bordered on the east by Sentz Street, west on Washington to Capitol Streets, then north to Smith Street.”1 &nbsp; The neighborhood was the center of social, economic, educational and religious life for African Americans. &nbsp;&nbsp;Not only were Black residences and businesses predominant in “The Block”, the area was also a location for Greek, Italian, Lebanese and Syrian businesses.



Life in “The Block” during the Jim Crow era and period of segregation (late 19th century and early 20th century) has been described by former residents and business owners as “safe. . .a beautiful area where everybody was your protector, and friends and family looked after one another.”&nbsp; One former resident describes, “Days growing up on The Block meant playing with other children across the neighborhood, whether they were white, Black, Greek, Syrian or Lebanese.&nbsp; Everybody participated in keeping the kids engaged and making sure there was something to do. With segregation, it was something that just happened. It was a part of everyday life; it was something that just occurred, and our lives continued. We lived in a mixed community, and we were friends with kids in the community.”2&nbsp; 

James D. Randall and Anne E. Gilmer wrote a series on early Black history in an African American newspaper that was geared toward the Black population in the State of West Virginia, the West Virginia Beacon Digest. &nbsp;The newspaper office was located in “The Block”. In their history articles, they spotlighted African American leaders, businesses, and churches.&nbsp; From that came a book published by the Beacon Digest in 1989 – Black Past in which Randall and Gilmer chronicle the persons, businesses, churches and school located in “The Block”.3&nbsp; They tell the stories of business locations that made up the area that now only has five of the original structures.&nbsp; Those stories and locations are about the community life and contribution of individuals, such as The Ferguson Hotel (a Black only hotel) which hosted national African American entertainers like Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald.&nbsp;&nbsp; Randall &amp; Gilmer’s book chronicles places like the barber shop, churches, the segregated high school, civic clubs, a few physician offices and the pharmacy with a soda fountain. They write, “Many children looked forward to their weekly treat of a chocolate soda after Sunday School.”4 

Very few of the original homes and businesses remain in “The Block” today. Urban renewal, development of the US interstate system through the city, a decline of the African-American population and loss of private homes have left very little of the original structures. &nbsp;Five original buildings, which have been individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places, are located in the historical center of African-American life in Charleston WV. These five buildings (in order of their placement date on the National Register) contribute to the lessons of history in “The Block” – (1988) Elizabeth Harden Gilmore House, home of a pioneer of the civil rights movement in West Virginia; &nbsp;(1988) Sam Starks Home, home of a prominent African American politician who became the first African American state librarian;&nbsp; (1990) Garnet High School, one of three Black high schools in the city during segregation;&nbsp; (1991) Simpson Memorial United Methodist Church organized just at the end of the Civil War; and, (1992) Mattie V. Lee Home, named for the first African-American woman physician from West Virginia, was a safe haven for young women coming to Charleston for employment.&nbsp; In 2011, through the efforts of the West Virginia Center for African-American Art &amp; Culture and Anthony Kinzer, its Executive Director, “The Block” obtained the designation as a Local Historic District by the Charleston Historic Landmarks Commission. “Since so few original buildings in The Block remain, the district is ineligible for listing as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places.” (Anthony Kinzer, Sr. personal interview)

The West Virginia Center for African American Art &amp; Culture, a nonprofit organization, was organized in 2001.&nbsp; The Center has partnered with individuals, civic leaders, organizations and state agencies to provide education and cultural dialogue.&nbsp;&nbsp; The Center has continued to tell the story of “The Block” through a cooperative venture with the Charleston Convention and Visitors Bureau at Appalachian Power Park Building, 601 Morris Street that displays the stories of “The Block”.&nbsp; Since 2014 The Center has sponsored in partnership with the West Virginia State Archives &amp; History – “The Block Speaker Series”, which has brought local, state and national individuals to tell their personal stories of growing up, living and working in “The Block”.&nbsp; Through the work of The Center, history of “The Block” has recognized the outstanding contributions of persons like civil rights leader Leon Sullivan and a thoracic cardiovascular surgeon/researcher, John Norman as well as countless numbers of individuals who have contributed to the common good of society and their families.&nbsp;&nbsp; The Center anticipates in the future a re-print publication of the now “out-of-print” book, Black Past by James D. Randall and Anne E. Gilmer. &nbsp;Anthony Kinzer, Executive Director of the Center writes in Goldenseal State Magazine about “The Block”:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; “The Block encouraged individuals to make their mark on the world and to work hard for better living conditions for themselves, their families, and their community. It created a sense of pride and confidence for these folks to know they could make a difference,&nbsp; regardless of the circumstances of their lives. The things they learned and accomplished on The Block gave rise to a strong Black middle class and the name “The Block” still brings a tear to the eye along with a smile to those who grew up there.” 5Five African American historic sites on the National Register of Historic Places are located in “The Block”. Through the ongoing work of the West Virginia Center for African-American Art &amp; Culture, Inc. the personal stories and impact on contemporary society of former residents and business owners are featured in “The Block Speaker Series”, in conjunction with the West Virginia Archives &amp; History on the grounds of the State Capitol. This rich culturally diverse historic neighborhood was home to several nationally recognized individuals (educators, civil rights leaders, physicians, business persons, and religious leaders).&nbsp; &nbsp;Urban renewal, development of the US interstate system, a decline of the African American population and loss of private homes have left very little of the original structures. “The Block” is full of heritage and story that has contributed to the common good of society and culture.&nbsp; &nbsp;

This historical marker commemorates the history of an African American neighborhood known as “The Block." This 25-acre tract served as the residential, social, economic, educational and religious center of the African American population of the city during the era of segregation. In 2011, the state & city officially recognized local historic district. This marker is one of two West Virginia historical markers commemorating the neighborhood and was erected by the West Virginia Center for African American Art & Culture, Inc.  

The Block Historical Marker, Charleston West Virginia 

On
August 11, 1958, a committee of white and Black representatives of the Charleston
chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) approached the management of
the Diamond Department Store. The members recognized that the manager of the
store, a native of Missouri and long-time resident of Alabama, might be
unfamiliar with the fact that many of the restaurants and stores in Charleston
served white and Black customers and none of these establishments had lost
business for doing so. The manager promised to take the matter to the board and
contact CORE with his response. After he failed to respond, members of CORE
again met with the manager who reported that the board voted unanimously
against CORE's request to end its ban on serving Black customers at the
Diamond's lunch counter. At the time, the store also denied Black customers the
opportunity to try on merchandise before they purchased it. The manager
defended both of these policies by claiming any modification would offend white
customers. In response, the churches and other institutions in Charleston's
Black community called on members to boycott the Diamond.

&nbsp;

Elizabeth Harden
Gilmore led a 22-month campaign to end racial discrimination at the Diamond
Department Store. Gilmore and other Black leaders in Charleston established a
local chapter of the CORE for the express purpose of challenging segregation at
the leading department stores of Charleston. Some of the leading department
stores agreed to integrate after meeting with members of CORE, largely due to
the recognition that maintaining their policy of racial discrimination might
lead to boycotts and protests that would hurt business. Within a few months,
Kresge, Woolworth, and the Newberry department stores opened their lunch
counters to customers of all races. The Capitol Theater also decided to
integrate its facilities. However, the Stone&amp;Thomas Department Store and
the Diamond Department Store continued to draw the color line. African American
patrons could purchase clothing but they could not try those items on and they
could not return them after they had touched their skin. Although they could
purchase meals to-go, the Diamond's lunch counter refused to seat African
Americans.

After months of
protests by members of CORE that brought older community members together with
students at West Virginia State College, management decided to open the
Diamond's lunch counter to all races on May 3, 1960. Blanche Wade recalled how the protests hurt the Diamond
economically. She and other protesters would purchase items and then attempt to
be seated at the Diamond's lunch counter. After being refused service, she and
others would politely return the items. When this strategy failed to bring
integration, she and others escalated their protest from returning items to
effectively shutting down the lunch counter by holding sit-ins.

The Diamond Department Store was established in 1927, and was a state of the art five floor retailer in Charleston, WV. The store was successful even through the Great Depression and expanded enough in the late 1940s to have the first escalators in the state installed. However, the Diamond Department store was only elaborate for the white population of Charleston, as they banned the African American community from the store’s lunch counter and cafeteria. Local activist, Elizabeth Harden Gilmore, and the Congress of Racial Equality staged sit-ins for a year and a half to fight for their right to be treated equally. In 1930, the Diamond Department Store opened their lunch counter and cafeterias to everyone no matter the color of their skin, thanks to the efforts of Gilmore and CORE.

Sit-Ins at the Diamond Department Store, 1958-1960

W.D. Hopen of Sutton, West Virginia sculpted this figure of Saint Francis of Assisi for Saint Francis Hospital. The bronze statue was completed in 1986 and installed the same year. Saint Francis cradles a squirrel in his right arm while his outstretched left hand meets a bird. These reflect Francis' role as the patron saint of animals and nature. He believed that even animals deserve the same dignity and respect we give to other people. 

Places I Want to See in Charleston

Clay Center for the Arts & Sciences

Introduction

Images

Backstory and Context

Sources

Additional Information