Henry Highland Garnett was born into slavery in Maryland in 1815. At the age of 10, his family escaped slavery and moved to New York. In the 1840s, he became an abolitionist. He was the first Black speaker to give a speech in the House of Representatives. Here in ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä, one of three Black high schools was named after him.
The Garnet School (the stone cutting company made a spelling error leaving off one "t" and the Board of Education didn’t require them to fix it) was founded in 1900 by C.W. Boyd in an existing elementary school, then in 1927 the school moved to the location we know today on the corner of Dickinson and Shrewsbury streets. Located in an area called “The Block,†the school was a hub for Black-owned businesses and was a pillar of the African American community. The spring of 1956 was the last segregated class.
After integration, it housed Kanawha Technical High School through 1961 and then John Adams Junior High while the building that houses John Adams today was under construction. The Garnet School then became the Career Center that Kanawha County Schools owned until three years ago, when it was sold to the alumni group the Garnet Foundation.
Notable Garnet alumni include: the Rev. Leon Sullivan; medical pioneer John C. Norman Jr.; Tony Brown; Ivin Lee (first woman to head a police department in West Virginia); and my late father, Cubert “Bubby†Smith (artist, professor and city councilman) and his two siblings, Philander “Sonny†Smith Jr. and Marilyn “Mon†Smith Callender. Two graduates currently are the president and and vice president of the board: Donald Epps (class of 1955) and Sandra Evans-Davis (class of 1956).
Garnet alumni, the foundation and the community around the building are wanting the facility to be utilized again to serve the community. We are wanting to house community museums and nonprofit organizations whose goal it is to inform and help and serve others. Henry Highland Garnett was a visionary who sought to help slaves empower themselves to be free. The Garnet Foundation’s hope is to do the same, to offer help to empower people to be their better selves and for the building to return as a beacon of the community.
The foundation is looking for groups/entities to rent spaces in the building to do just that. There is plenty of space to rent. The foundation is utilizing a space to create a museum to showcase the history of the school and the community it has served.
