'It makes sense': Why historic Black schools are joining Maury County's lost landmarks mural

Members of the Maury County Commission have introduced a plan to add three historically Black school buildings to a mural recognizing the county’s lost historical structures.

The ‘Lost Landmarks’ mural located inside the Tom Primm Commission Meeting Room in the northeastern corner of Columbia’s Courthouse Square features more than a dozen buildings of local importance that no longer exist.

The mural, originally presented to the commission by the Maury County Historical Society, includes the Bethel House Hotel which previously stood along West 7th Street, the old Columbia Central High School, Hay Long High School which once stood in Mt. Pleasant, the Columbia Institute and the Garden Street Presbyterian Church.

Commission Chairman Don Morrow, supporting a request made by commissioners Gary Stovall and Talvin Barner, formally introduced the request during the county’s May building committee meeting.

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“I think it is something that may have been omitted in the past,” Morrow told his fellow commissioners. “They are historic buildings. It makes sense to me that we do that.”

The commissioners proposed that Columbia’s College Hill School and Carver-Smith High School in addition to Mt. Pleasant’s Clarke Training School be added to the mural.

The three buildings would be the first structures associated with the county’s rich Black history to be featured in the mural.

All three schools were campuses that taught Black students before the integration of Tennessee’s Public School system in 1954.

College Hill opened in the 1880s and was the first public school for Columbia's Black residents. Carver-Smith then replaced the school in the early 1950s.

Opened in January 1950, Carver-Smith was named after George Washington Carver, an African American who won international fame for agricultural research, and Stella Howse Smith who was the Jeanes Teacher/Supervisor of Colored Schools in Maury County.

After members of the city’s Black community held a successful fundraising effort to purchase property on East End Street, construction of the building began in 1947.

After several unsuccessful attempts to stop construction by some of the white citizens in the neighborhood, the 12-classroom building included a large vocational shop and a gymnasium/ auditorium combination was completed in December 1949.

The school opened with a staff of 16 teachers.

Clarke began as a Rosenwald School, a schoolhouse supported by the Rosenwald Fund, a partnership between Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald, President of Sears and Roebuck.

The fund provided matching grants for more than 5,000 schools, shops, and teacher’s residences built-in 15 southern states between 1917 and 1931.

Clarke was originally opened under the program in the 1920s.

Cost of mural

Morrow said it would cost the county about $1,500 to add the three schools to the mural.

“I think it would be wise,” Stovall said, who represents District 3. “The sign says lost landmarks. African Americans have lost landmarks too. We want something up here to represent African American history in Maury County and that ain’t a lot.”

The mural is a recreation of a hand-painted wall that has decorated the halls of the commission’s meeting room for more than a decade.

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The mural was replaced with a wallpaper recreation as the room was renovated and repaired after a burst pipe flooded the chambers at the beginning of 2018.

“It is part of the heritage that we have, and I think everybody is in agreement that we do that,” Morrow said. “I think it is going to be a good addition.”

Morrow said he hopes the change is approved by the full commission before the county’s general election this August.

County Historian Jo Ann Williams McClellan, the founder of the African American Heritage Society, said the schools would be an excellent addition to the mural.

“As a historian and the president of the African American Heritage Society, I think that is an important move because the schools are important to the African American community and the county’s history,” McClellan said.

“I think it is an excellent idea, and it should be done,” McClellan said. “Those schools are very significant to the African American History and Maury County.”

Reach Mike Christen at mchristen@c-dh.net. Follow him on Twitter at @MikeChristenCDH and on Instagram at @michaelmarco. Please consider supporting his work and that of other Daily Herald journalists by subscribing to the publication.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Herald: Historic Black schools to mural of 'Lost Landmarks' in Maury County