African American History of Huntington Trail

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1. Douglass Junior and Senior High School

Constructed in 1924, Douglass Junior and Senior High School served the African American community of Huntington during the era of segregation until its closing in 1961 and now serves as the home of a variety of community organizations. This school was the second in Huntington to be named after Frederick Douglass and remained open until 1961, a reflection of both Huntington's reluctance to integrate and the Black community's desire to maintain what had become an important institution for them. As an academic, social, and cultural center for Black families in Huntington, the school had a profound and enduring impact on the city’s African American community over its seventy years. Notable graduates include Carter G. Woodson, a Harvard-trained scholar known as the father of Black History, and NBA All-star Hal Greer, the first African American athlete at Marshall University. The building, which currently houses a community medical outreach center, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

2. A.D. Lewis Community Center

The A.D. Lewis Community Center dates back to the establishment of the first municipal pool for African Americans in the era of segregation. Today, it is a full-service community center named in honor of Baptist Minister Reverend A.D. Lewis (1858-1943). Prior to the creation of the Center's pool, there were no municipal pools open to African Americans. In 1967, the community center was added and a new building was opened. Today, the center has a pool, basketball courts, and other sports facilities along with after-school activities. The center also holds fairs, festivals, and programs for the community at large. Since its foundation, A.D. Lewis Community Center has been a fixture of the Fairfield West community, providing valuable resources to the neighborhood’s youth.

3. Carter G. Woodson Statue

Carter G. Woodson, known to many as "the Father of Black History,” was born to former slaves and worked in the mines of West Virginia before graduating from Berea College, the University of Chicago, and Harvard University, where he earned his Ph.D. Woodson believed that educating the populace about Black history had the power to transform society, improve race relations, and benefit people of all races. Woodson was educated in the segregated public schools of Huntington, West Virginia, and became the principal of his former high school after completing a teacher certification program at Kentucky's racially integrated Berea College. He went on to earn a M.A. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. Woodson founded Negro History Week in February of 1926, and his efforts to grow this annual celebration of Black history and culture led to the creation of Black History Month. Woodson also created the Journal of Negro History and the scholarly and community organization known today as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. These institutions, together with his scholarly and popular books, journals, and articles, provided a platform for educating others about African American history with works written by Black and white scholars. Woodson was among one of the first scholars to research and publish works on slavery from the perspective of the enslaved.This statue was commemorated in 2003, and is said that Woodson's line of sight is directly pointed at the first location of Douglass High School.

4. 16th Street Baptist Church

Created in 1905, the church's founding came as over 40 members of the First Baptist Church disbanded and formed their own Baptist Church. Members, led by A.D. Lewis, a prominent Black preacher and advocate of community outreach, focused much of their time to help build up the local Black community they served.

5. Memphis Tennessee Garrison House

This small frame house was home to Memphis Tennessee Garrison, a leader in the African American community who served as one of the vice presidents of the NAACP. Garrison spent the majority of her life living in rural Appalachia. After teaching in a one-room school in Gary, West Virginia, she retired to Huntington. She worked to secure resources for schools, supported local civil rights initiatives, and became a vice president of the NAACP. Garrison lived at this home from the 1950s until the 1980s. During those years, she opened her home to many in the community. She also used the home to host numerous meetings where leaders of the African American community came together to discuss their challenges and propose solutions. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in January 2017 and is being preserved by community leaders who hope to turn the home into a community museum.

6. Ebenezer United Methodist Church

Ebenezer Methodist Church is one of the earliest African-American churches established in Huntington. The church was established in the early 1870s on Norway Avenue before it relocated to its current building at 1651 8th Avenue in 1917. In 1965, Ebenezer Methodist Church was integrated, becoming the first in the city, and possibly the state, to have done so. During the 1970s, the church established the Ebenezer Community Outreach Center Inc. to provide children with a safe learning environment and address issues of literacy, racism, economic conditions and spiritual hopelessness. The church also operates an affiliated medical clinic, Ebenezer Medical Outreach Inc., that provides medical services to the Fairfield community.

7. Barnett Elementary School (1891-1960s)

During segregation, Barnett Elementary School served the African American elementary students of Huntington. Located at the corner of Eighth Avenue and Sixteenth Street (now Hal Greer Boulevard), the school originally opened in 1891 as Douglass High School, the city’s first high school for Black students. The school grew substantially over the ensuing years, from a graduating class of just three students in 1893 to an enrollment of over four hundred students in 1919. As demand grew for better educational facilities for Black students, a new Douglass High School was built on Tenth Avenue in 1925. With the construction of the new school, the old Douglass High was renamed Barnett Elementary School after the Reverend Nelson Barnett, the founder of First Baptist Church and a prominent figure in the city’s early Black community. Over the years, Barnett Elementary became a fixture in the community alongside Douglass High. While the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown vs. Board of Education legally ended segregation in education in 1954, integration in Huntington was a slow process. Barnett Elementary ultimately closed during the 1960s, and its students were transferred to existing white schools. After sitting vacant for many years, the former Barnett Elementary was demolished in 1994.

8. Barnett Hospital and Nursing School

From 1912 to 1939, the Barnett Hospital and Nursing School served the African American community of Huntington, West Virginia. Dr. Clinton Constantine “C.C.” Barnett completed his early education in the Huntington area before receiving his medical degree from Howard University. Dr. Barnett then returned to Huntington to practice medicine, where in 1912 he achieved his dream of founding a hospital owned and operated entirely by African Americans. In 1918, the hospital expanded to include a nursing school run by Dr. Barnett’s wife Clara. At the time, although several medical schools accepted African American students, many hospitals refused to train Black interns, and there were even fewer integrated nursing schools. In 1930, Dr. Barnett leased his hospital to the City of Huntington, who renamed the facility the City Hospital. After serving both Black and white patients during the Great Depression, the City Hospital closed in 1939 and the building was sold to the General Laborers Union Local 543, who occupied it until 2007. In 2008, the former hospital was purchased and subsequently added to the National Register of Historic Places. Although plans were announced to remodel the building into apartments, the status of this project is currently unclear.

9. First Baptist Church

First Baptist Church was established as the Mt. Olive Baptist and is believed to be the oldest Black congregation in the city. The congregation first met at a small church located on Norway Avenue near the present-day Spring Hill Cemetery. That congregation changed their name in the late 1880s and grew significantly in the decades that followed. During the 1960s, the congregation moved to its current location. The original church building that stood at this location in the early 1960s was destroyed in a fire in 1965. The congregation persevered, pooling their resources and funding the construction of the current structure shortly after the fire.

10. Sit-in at the White Pantry, 1963

In 1963, members of the Civic Interest Progressives, a civil rights organization led by Marshall students and Huntington community leaders, challenged racial discrimination at local eateries such as Bailey's and the White Pantry Inn. After students waging a sit-in were attacked at the White Pantry, they changed their strategy and held a series of "share-ins." In these protests, liberal white students who wanted to help challenge the color line would enter a restaurant and order a meal. After the meal was delivered, they would invite African American students to join them at their table. Although these protests, combined with the legal work of local attorney Herbert Henderson, led to the end of Jim Crow at many Huntington restaurants prior to the spring of 1963, the owner of the White Pantry turned violent and attacked one of the Black students with a cattle prod. The second video clip below shows a young woman on the ground gasping for air after the owner of the White Pantry Inn lit sulfur cakes to force Black students to leave his restaurant.

11. Bailey's Cafeteria; 1963 Civil Rights Sit-In

Bailey’s Cafeteria earned a reputation as one of the best eateries in Huntington, West Virginia at the turn of the century. The popular restaurant was established in 1934 and remained open for six decades. To this day, many residents recall the restaurant with fondness, but prior to 1963, the restaurant was not open to all residents of the state. Members of the Civic Interest Progressives, a local civil rights organization established to challenge segregation, launched sit-in protests against Bailey's and several other Huntington restaurants in the spring of 1963. On May 1, 1963. The owners of Bailey’s Cafeteria then filed a court order against the protesters to stop the picketing in front of the restaurant. This attempt to use the courts to squelch the protest backfired and the more students and community members joined the protest. Hoping to end the demonstration, the owner reluctantly agreed to end segregation at Bailey’s. With this decision, several other restaurants followed suit and the Civic Interest Progressives focussed their efforts on the remaining establishments.

12. Diamond Teeth Mary Memorial Marker

Singer Mary Smith McClain was born on August 27, 1902, in Huntington, West Virginia. Living in an abusive environment, Mary left home at the age of 13, hopped a train, and joined the Rabbit Foot Minstrels in Memphis, Tennessee. From this point on, Mary became known as "Walking Mary," singing for the traveling minstrel show. From the 1920s to the 1940s Mary's career took off and she crisscrossed the country and performed alongside numerous blues and jazz legends. She also toured Europe three times. Mary passed away in 2000, and per her request, her ashes were scattered along the railroad tracks in her hometown of Huntington where she hopped a passing train to pursue her dreams. Mary is one of only a handful of West Virginians who became blues legends. Her career was long, but it wasn’t until she was in her 80s and 90s that she received widespread recognition. In those years, she performed at Carnegie Hall, the White House, and the Apollo Theatre.

This Tour is a Thematic Tour or Heritage Trail.

African American History of Huntington Trail

Created by Clio Admin on February 12th 2017, 6:25:52 pm.

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This brief walking/driving tour starts at Douglass High School and includes several African American churches and the former home of Memphis Tennessee Garrison. Highlights of the tour includes the statue of Carter G. Woodson, a Huntington resident and influential scholar who established Black History Month and the leading academic journal in African American History. After stops at several churches and schools, the tour moves to the downtown area with stops at more historic churches, markers that celebrate the achievement of black residents, and locations related to the struggle for racial equality in downtown Huntington.

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African American History

Entries on This Tour

African American History of Huntington Trail

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