Site of Lakeview School honored by National Register of Historic Places

COLUMBIA, SC (WOLO) — The National Register of Historic Places is recognizing the site of what was once an all Black school in West Columbia.

Community members, alumni, and officials came together for a dedication ceremony to honor Lakeview School — which began in 1925.

The school was rebuilt in 1949 — where Brookland-Lakeview Empowerment Center stands today — and remained open until 1968.

Congressman James Clyburn says he hopes more historical markers honoring the black community are erected around South Carolina.

“The children who play on these grounds can look up there and see, and they see a name, and they’ll be able to identify with that name. That’s what will make them know, not just who they are, but what they can be,” says Clyburn.

Isola Washington-Calhoun graduated from Lakeview High School in 1947 — along with 36 other students that year. She says she was also nominated by her teachers as most likely to succeed.

“I thoroughly feel just as warm about Lakeview today as I did back then,” says Washington-Calhoun.

She believes the teachers of Lakeview were truly dedicated to helping their students succeed.

“We appreciated school and appreciated the opportunities. It might not have been what we wanted, but we took what we had and got as much out of it as we could and made our aims ideas, and we obeyed our teachers, and appreciated their efforts in teaching us and helping us to develop into young men and women,” says Washington-Calhoun.

Bennie Sulton and his friends graduated from Lakeview between 1964 and 1968.

Sulton says Lakeview served as a model for the community.

“Lakeview, here they built the whole child. The discipline, the thing we’re missing in our schools today, you know at this location discipline was never a problem. And the academics, all of our teachers had advanced degrees, and because it was a segregated school that was no excuse, and because we had hand me down books, that was no excuse. You had to perform and they wanted you to do your very best,” Sulton says.

According to school officials, an interactive virtual museum showcasing Lakeview’s history is currently being built inside of the Empowerment Center.