Historic Athens organized a demonstration Thursday evening to protest the planned demolition of a West Broad Street School building.
The Clarke County School District plans to convert the West Broad Street School campus into an early learning center and construction is planned to begin soon in order to meet a Mar. 1, 2022 deadline. While the plan is to preserve and restore the oldest building on the campus, the 1958 building facing Campbell Lane is planned for demolition and is the center of controversy.
Critics of the plan say that the building has historic value as one of the few remaining school buildings in Georgia from the 1950s “Equalization Era,” when Southern schools improved facilities in an attempt to justify segregation and that the school should be remodeled instead. Here’s Ken Dious, a lawyer who attended the school as a child in the 1950s and spoke at last night’s demonstration:
The demonstration started outside of the H.T Edwards building, ahead of a School Board meeting. Once the meeting began, protesters headed over to the Campbell Lane building, where the crowd heard from Tommy Valentine of Historic Athens, as well as several speakers who were West Broad Street School alumni.
