Historic Booker T. Washington Auditorium Restoration Project Receives $500,000 from National Park Service

Booker T. Washington AuditoriumThe University of South Carolina (USC) has received $500,000 from the National Park Service to rehabilitate and preserve the the historic Booker T. Washington Auditorium.

Built in 1956, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2018. It is the last remains of Booker T. Washington High School, one of the first public high schools for African American Students. In the 1920s and 1930s, its teachers included civil rights leaders J. Andrew Simmons, Septima Clark and Modjeska Simkins.

“The continued support of the National Park Service fortifies our efforts to preserve, document and reconstruct the extraordinary histories of the Booker T. Washington High School and the surrounding African American neighborhoods that were uprooted and displaced in the wake of urban renewal and university expansion,”  said Dr. Bobby Donaldson, a professor of history at the university.