Booker College

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Booker College

Booker College (also called Booker City High School or Booker Memorial College) was a predecessor of Miles College which was founded in 1902 by the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church for the instruction of African-American students, primarily as an industrial training program.

The school was approved by the church during its 1901 annual conference, and was to be patterned after the Tuskegee Institute. The committee purchased a 20-acre site from E. W. Whips' Booker City Land Company at Booker City north of Ensley. The company donated an additional 10 acres to the school, which made plans to open in October 1902. Meanwhile the Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Company (TCI) prepared to drill exploratory shafts into the Warrior coal field at Booker City.

During the next year a dormitory building was constructed, with temporary classroom space secured in various other buildings. Final preparations were delayed by a 1902 coal miners' strike. By the time the school opened its doors in November, the school had been merged with another Colored Methodist Episcopal school in Thomasville, Clarke County, and rechartered as Miles Memorial College, named for CME bishop William H. Miles (1828–1892). In March 1905 Tuskegee trustee Robert Bedford visited Booker City and praised the work being done there. G. M. Noble was principal of the school, and teachers included Lia Elston, L. C. Stewart, M. L. Elliot, Carmilla Weir, and Oliver Bradford.

In 1907 James Bray was made president of the college. That same year TCI entered into negotiations with the CME church to acquire all of its property at Booker City in exchange for 30 acres in the Vinesville district of Interurban Heights, where it was planning to develop an industrial city around a new steel plant. The company also offered $30,000 toward the construction of new campus buildings. The first of those, Williams Hall, was completed in 1908 in the city of Corey, later renamed Fairfield. Booker City was redeveloped by TCI and transformed into the "model mining village" of Docena.

References

  • "Items from the Steel City" (November 28, 1901) The Birmingham News, p. 8
  • "Negro Bishops Meet" (January 18, 1902) The Montgomery Advertiser, p. 3
  • "Happy at Ensley" (October 16, 1902) The Birmingham News, p. 8
  • "Visited Booker City" (March 9, 1905) The Birmingham News, p. 10
  • "News from Booker City, Ala." (December 7, 1905) The Journal (Huntsville), p. 3
  • "School is Ready: Miles Memorial College is Formally Opened." (January 9, 1908) The Montgomery Advertiser
  • Fallin, Wilson (1997) The African American Church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1815-1963: A Shelter in the Storm. Taylor & Francis ISBN 9780815328834, p. 70
  • Miles College Centennial History Committee (2005) Miles College: The First Hundred Years. Campus History Series. Mount Pleasant, South Carolina: Arcadia Press. ISBN 9780738517933