Raleigh County Schools unveil Stratton High School Tribute Museum
We are honored to collaborate with Raleigh County Schools on the Stratton Elementary School project including the Stratton High Tribute Museum, honoring the past and looking to the future. The following was coverage from the Beckley Register Herald related to the unveiling of the tribute space.
By Riley McCoy, The Register-Herald
BECKLEY – Raleigh County Schools Superintendent Serena Starcher unveiled a new Stratton High School Tribute Museum Tuesday during a ribbon cutting ceremony held inside Stratton Elementary School.
Hundreds of students and alumni filled the gymnasium at the new Stratton Elementary School to honor the legacy of Stratton High School—the last all-African American high school which closed in 1967.
Alumni, elected officials, city organizers and private contractors watched a tribute video from graduates of the old school which chronicled its history, from being built in 1919 to its closing during desegregation.
Afterward, the Raleigh County Board of Education held a special ribbon cutting ceremony in the main hallway where the tribute museum sits in a dedicated side room of the corridor.
The space—which is filled with photographs, trophies and statistics of the school’s academic and athletic legacy—aims to connect current students with the achievements of the former school while also preserving its memory for posterity.
According to Starcher, the museum grew out of the board’s decision to replace the aging Stratton building but not its history.
“There used to be a Stratton High School,” Starcher said. “It was an all-Black high school and in 1967, it closed and became Stratton Junior High then Stratton Junior High closed in ’98 before it became Stratton Elementary School.”
As the district moved forward with a new elementary facility, Starcher met with a community committee from Beckley and began talking about how to keep the school’s story fresh for new students.
“We talked about the need to have a space in this building that carried forth that legacy left by Stratton High School,” Starcher said. “We respect the past and then connect it to our children today and they’ll be part of the ceremony as well.”
For some of those standing inside the room, the story of Stratton was not just historical but personal.
“I’m a preacher over at First Missionary Baptist in Boomer,” Robert Frazier said. “I was in the last class, 1967.”
Frazier brought memories in the form of historical yearbooks which highlight Stratton’s athletic dominance and rattled off scores that now live behind glass. “Class of 1945, Stratton, 310 points [for the season], opponents 8 [for the season],” Frazier said. “Class of 1947, Stratton, 149 points, opponents 31. Look at this one — 337 to 14 [in] 1946. They won the championship. They didn’t lose a game until 1948 and in 1948, 251 [points], opponents 38.”
“The basketball teams were good,” Frazier added, “but the football team was the crown jewel.”
Frazier continued to describe connection to the school that goes beyond athletic or academic achievement.
“All my uncles and my aunts attended Stratton and I graduated from there,” Frazer said. “It’s like a family legacy and all of those are gone now, and I think most of our teachers are gone and even the players have gone on so I’m glad that the county and the city is still recognizing Stratton and I’ll be ever grateful for all that they’ve done for the school and for us.”
For Beckley Mayor Ryan Neal, Stratton first loomed large not as a high school but as a junior high gym.
“I remember in grade school playing basketball for Mascot Elementary,” Neal said. “For whatever reason, Raleigh County had the tournament here at Stratton Junior High and I thought it was such a big deal to be a little grade school kid and go to this enormous looking junior high building.”
Neal added that his love of history made Tuesday’s ceremony feel especially significant.
“I love history. I won’t even read a book or watch a movie unless it’s based on true story,” Neal said. “So, watching this and seeing how far we’ve come, you know, as a city, as a country, yeah, it’s amazing and congratulations to all the people that put this together because now Stratton High School, like their legacy, will live on forever over here.”
The district hired design consultants Laurel Webster and James Hersick to help shape the small museum. Their firm previously worked with ZMM Architects and another alumni group on a tribute hall in Jefferson County.
“We’re a design consultancy agency and we help communities turn assets and things for them,” Hersick said.
Additionally, Hersick estimated that the Stratton project took “about a year and a half altogether between initial conversations to the last bits of this being installed two weeks ago.”
According to Webster, the museum is part of a broader effort to preserve African American history in West Virginia.
“There’s such a deep history and legacy of the African American community, the coal mining and all the other things down here that this is a nice note and a way to preserve some of that story in the community and ties back into the larger story for the state,” Webster said.
For readers who never walked the old hallways, the new tribute space offers a compressed version of what Stratton still means—a wall of scores no one else matched and a room in the new elementary school where a city, its students and its elders are trying to keep one name from fading out of the record book.
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