Photo credit:
Anne E. Bruder,
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Bel Alton High School
Inventory No.:
CH-562
Date Listed:
2/3/2025
Location:
9505 Crain Highway (US 301), Bel Alton, Charles County
Category:
Building
Period/Date of Construction:
1938-1969
Architect/Builder:
Herman F. Lund (1937-1938); James J. Baldwin (1947 to 1955)
Boundary Description:
The Bel Alton Colored High School stands on the west side of Crain Highway (US 301) southwest of Irving Road, consisting of 12.76 Acres as shown on the Charles County Tax Map 64 for Parcel 74, and Charles County Plat Book Liber 59, Folio 75 filed by the County Commissioners of Charles County on July 3, 2012.
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Description:
The Charles County Board of Education (School Board) purchased five parcels between 1923 and 1957 to build elementary and high schools for African Americans living in southern Charles County. Bel Alton High School, which dates from 1938, is the second building constructed on the site. Bel Alton High School’s initial appearance was as a one-story, nine-bay school building with an attached three-bay, one-story auditorium. The building is oriented to the east, but the west-side classrooms also have the same bank of large windows to enhance the lighting. At its opening, the high school had indoor plumbing, running water, and electricity, which were important features, as many residents of the county at the time were using outhouses and oil lamps. Between 1954 and 1959, improvements included the addition of four classrooms and offices in a separate annex building to the west (1954), a two-story addition with a basement cafeteria that was attached on the high school’s south wall (1954), an addition to the annex (1957), and an industrial arts/agriculture building with a gymnasium that was attached to the south side of the industrial arts building constructed northwest of the auditorium (1959). The School Board planned the construction of the annex, the cafeteria wing, industrial arts and gymnasium buildings in 1948, and their construction during the period of significance makes them contributing resources that demonstrate Bel Alton High School’s significance.
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Significance:
Bel Alton High School is significant for its architecture as well as its role in education, ethnic heritage (black), and social history. Bel Alton High School opened in 1938, closed in 1966 as a segregated high school, and continued as an integrated junior high school until 1969. The history of African American education in Charles County began following the adoption of Maryland’s 1864 Constitution ending enslavement. Starting in 1867, the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen’s Bureau) came to Charles County to assist trustees in purchasing land to establish schools and churches for small communities. Agency and activism by African Americans around education continued into the twentieth century. Actions by teachers, parents, and students between 1919 and 1969 in the small rural African American communities in southern Charles County enabled them to achieve an improved education for their children. Historian David Taft Terry has called the 1930s the period of “struggle” by African Americans in Baltimore in the face of strict segregation to achieve their rights as American citizens. In Maryland’s counties, “the struggle” often centered on aspects of education and citizens’ rights. Between 1936 and 1966, Bel Alton High School in southern Charles County was the result of parents, teachers and students’ activism and agency, and it represents African American educational history in Charles County.
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