Benedict College has been awarded a $750,000 grant to continue preservation work on the Starks Center, pictured here on Thursday, July 11, 2024. (Jessica Holdman/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA – A college library that was once a gathering center for Civil Rights activists in Columbia and a historic campus building in rural Bamberg County are among preservation projects awarded a federal grant in the latest round from the National Park Service.
Benedict College and Voorhees University, both small private schools, are each receiving $750,000 to restore historic buildings under the Park Service’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities grant program for historic preservation.
Since 1995, the Park Service has awarded more than $107 million in grants to historically Black colleges and universities across the country.
That includes $10.7 million to 15 projects in eight states this year, according to a release this week.
“It’s vital for America’s HBCUs to preserve their vibrant history, ensuring that the places and the events that happened there are not forgotten,” National Park Service Director Chuck Sams said in a statement. “I’m proud that the National Park Service can support this locally-led stewardship.”
Benedict College, one of two private historically Black colleges located in Columbia, will use the funding to continue preservation of the Starks Center, formerly Starks Library.
The building, constructed in 1935, was designed by and named for John Starks, Benedict College’s first Black president. The building is one of the five buildings in the Benedict College Historic District , which has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1987.
Both Benedict College and the capital city’s other historically Black university, Allen University, were home to active chapters of the NAACP. Students from the two colleges, located just across the street from each other, would gather in the Starks Library to plan protests and demonstrations during the height of the Civil Rights era.
“The rich history of the Civil Rights movement in Columbia is inextricably tied to Benedict College. It is an extensive, bold narrative that is important today and for future generations,” Benedict College President Roslyn Artis has said.
Benedict College has been a regular recipient of Park Service grants, netting more than $3 million in the past five years.
In 2020, the college received $500,000 from a different pool of Park Service funding, the African American Civil Rights grant program, to make repairs to the Stark Center, upgrading mechanical systems, piping and floors.
That same year, the Park Service put $500,000 towards the renovation of Pratt Hall, the second-oldest building on the college’s campus.
Pratt, which now serves as an administrative building, once housed a small training hospital for Black nurses. Dr. Matilda Evans , the first licensed Black female doctor in the state and the first woman doctor in the city of Columbia, ran the 20-bed health center.
Other past Park Service funded projects include preservation on the former college president’s house, Morgan Hall, Antisdel Chapel and Duckett Hall, which currently houses the school’s business program.
Voorhees University, located just outside rural Denmark, will use its federal funding for upgrades to the St. James Building, constructed in 1932. It is part of the Voorhees College Historic District , listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1982.
The building, which started out as a home economics department, today houses the school’s business department, computer labs and an auditorium that is opened up to the public for community events.
Before it was a university, Voorhees founder Elizabeth Wright operated the campus as a high school for poor, rural Black children. She modeled it after her alma mater, the Tuskegee Institute in Albama, with the guidance of her mentor, Booker T. Washington. Voorhees would later become a junior college in 1947 and a four-year college in 1962.
Esther Brown, the school’s director of sponsored research, said the funding will be used to replace the building’s heating and cooling system, update the building to make it more wheelchair accessible and make repairs caused by a leaking roof.
Brown said grants such as these are particularly important to a small college like Voorhees, which does not have a large alumni base that it can look to for fundraising.
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