Tag: Garnet High School

March 19, 1925: First Black State High School Basketball Tournament Begins

On March 19, 1925, the state’s first basketball tournament for black high schools kicked off on the campus of West Virginia State College (now University) at Institute.

It featured 24 teams, with Lincoln High of Wheeling defeating Kimball in the championship. Kimball and other regions with large African-American populations were perennial favorites in the tournament. This included other McDowell County schools such as Gary and Excelsior High School of War as well as Beckley’s Genoa High.

During the 1930s and ‘40s, the tournament rotated among West Virginia State, Charleston’s Garnet High, and Carmichael Auditorium in Clarksburg. During this time, the dominant team was Clarksburg’s Kelly Miller High, coached by the legendary Mark Cardwell. The dominant teams in the late ‘40s and ‘50s were Garnet of Charleston and Douglass of Huntington.

The tournament continued a few years after school integration began, with Bluefield Park Central beating Byrd Prillerman in the last tournament. After 1957, the remaining all-black schools played in the formerly all-white high school tournament. In 1965, Class A Gary District became the first traditionally black high school to win the now-integrated tournament.

Actress & Playwright Ann Kathryn Flagg Died: October 27, 1970

Ann Kathryn Flagg died on October 27, 1970. The playwright, teacher, and actress was born in Charleston in 1924.

After growing up in the segregated part of town, she graduated from Garnet High School in 1941 and from West Virginia State College four years later. She then taught drama in a Virginia high school and toured nationally with the noted American Negro Repertory Players. Afterward, she returned to West Virginia to teach at Fairmont’s Dunbar High School.

In 1952, she was named director of the Children’s Theater at Karamu House in Cleveland. In this role, she adapted plays for children and received acclaim for starring in Sophocles’ Antigone and Aristophanes’ Lysistrata.

In 1961, she moved to Chicago to work on her master’s degree. During this time, she wrote Great Gettin’ Up Mornin’. The play came in first place in the National Collegiate Playwriting Contest and was broadcast nationally on CBS television. She went on to write more plays, including Blueboy to Holiday—Over, A Significant Statistic, and Unto the Least of These.

Her sudden death from an attack of emphysema at age 46 ended a promising career.

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