‘The shoulders we stand on’: Marker to honor memory of Rock Hill’s West End school
A modest building with an all-white, wooden exterior on a four-acre lot opened its doors in 1925.
It was the school where Black students grades 1-5 (and later 1-8) could receive an education during segregation. Nearly a century later, an historical marker will be unveiled so that building — and its place in history — won’t be forgotten.
On Saturday morning, a vehicle parade will start at Boyd Hill Baptist Church and end at a site off Cherry Road where West End School once stood. Then the marker that will honor the memory of the school will be unveiled. The site, 546 S. Cherry Road, is now home to the Pathways Community Center and Haven’s Men’s Shelter in Rock Hill.
Kenneth Alston, an organizer of the event who grew up in Rock Hill, told The Herald that honoring what West End was, the function it served and its place in history is important to the city.
“If you don’t know where you come from, then it’s going to be difficult to embrace your heritage,” he said in a phone interview Thursday. “People need to know the shoulders that we stand on.”
Alston, along with his wife, Selma, attended West End back in the 1950s, he said. The Rock Hill natives are involved in Preserving the Legacy of African American Schools in Rock Hill, a nonprofit dedicated to researching Rock Hill’s past.
They, along with the help of other West End alumni, friends and patrons, helped research and raise funds for the historical marker’s implementation. Saturday, therefore, marks about a year-long effort leading up to this marker’s placement — and the centuries-long fight for racial equality and justice.
“The importance of the marker for us is: This was our foundation,” Selma said. “This was our starting point in education. … It’s important for us because we’re saying that this school represented the best of the Boyd Hill community in how it raised up the kids in that community and surrounding communities to have pride in themselves, to be self-confident, and to learn the skills and the tools to become self-reliant and successful.”
About West End School
When it was built in 1925, the facility that would one day be West End School cost $9,100. It was funded by the school district, local African Americans and the Julius Rosenwald Fund.
The school, therefore, was a Rosenwald school — a product of the partnership between Booker T. Washington, the nationally renowned educator, reformer and presidential adviser who was Black, and prominent philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, who was white. Washington and Rosenwald built what at that time was state-of-the-art schools for African American children across the South during segregation. The effort, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, was “the most important initiative to advance Black education in the early 20th century.”
When the school opened, it was called “Boyd Hill School,” and four teachers taught approximately 200 students in grades 1-5, according to the historical marker. The school was later expanded to enroll pupils in grades 1-8.
Soon after its construction, the school was renamed West End School. Its student body remained segregated until 1970 — the same year Emmett Scott High School, the only high school Black students in Rock Hill could attend during segregation, had its last graduating class. West End closed in 1971 after the construction of desegregated York Road Elementary School.
Several local community leaders will speak at Saturday’s unveiling. There will be Barbara Boulware, a longtime educator in the Rock Hill School District and the daughter of Richard Boulware, who was the principal at West End for 19 years. There also will be RHSD superintendent Bill Cook and Rock Hill City Council member Nikita Jackson.
Jackson, who represents Ward 5 and is one of two Black members on the council, told The Herald on Thursday that she hopes commemorating West End in this way will remind Rock Hill residents of the past and inspire hope for the future.
“To me, it brings a sense of hope, a hope that things that we’re experiencing nowadays will and can get better,” Jackson said. “It took the collaboration of Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald to make things better for African American children during (that time) because they were not allowed to go to school with white children.
“And it’s going to take further collaboration of that sort for things to get better now.”
Marker Dedication Ceremony
A parade of vehicles will begin to line up at Boyd Hill Baptist Church (315 Glenn St.) at 9:30 a.m. Saturday. Cars then will drive to the historical marker at 546 S. Cherry Road. The ceremony, which begins at 10 a.m., will include a few speakers and the unveiling of the marker. A tour of the old West End School, some of which is preserved in the Pathways Community Center, will then be offered.
This story was originally published June 18, 2021 at 9:32 AM.
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