Howard Adult Center is the home of Georgetown County Adult Education. As a South Carolina Adult Education program, we strive to assist adults in obtaining the knowledge and skills necessary for employment and self-sufficiency; in the completion of a secondary school education; and we assist adults who are parents to obtain the educational skills necessary to become full partners in the educational development of their children.
History of Our Building
In 1986, the Georgetown Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta erected a historical marker on the Corner of Duke and King Streets in Georgetown that reads:
After purchasing this land January 1, 1866, Georgetown Colored Academy built a school here. By 1908 the old building had been torn down and a new school built, its name changed to Howard. The elementary department moved into a new structure on Kaminski Street in 1938; the high school followed in 1949. After the 1984 graduation, predominantly black Howard merged with mostly white Winyah School to form Georgetown High School.
Source: African American Historic Places in South Carolina, 2009. Published by South Carolina Department of Archives and History
Historical Marker
In 1986, the Georgetown Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta erected a historical marker on the Corner of Duke and King Streets in Georgetown that reads:
After purchasing this land January 1, 1866, Georgetown Colored Academy built a school here. By 1908 the old building had been torn down and a new school built, its name changed to Howard. The elementary department moved into a new structure on Kaminski Street in 1938; the high school followed in 1949. After the 1984 graduation, predominantly black Howard merged with mostly white Winyah School to form Georgetown High School.
Source: African American Historic Places in South Carolina, 2009. Published by South Carolina Department of Archives and History
Smith Inducted into Hall of Fame
A presentation was made to the family of Tommy Smith during half time of the Georgetown High School football game at the Thomas L. Smith football stadium on Friday night, Oct. 3, 2014.
He was inducted into South Carolina’s Football Coaches Hall of Fame.
The following article was read during the presentation:
"Anyone who knew Tommy Smith knows his coaching was not a career for him; it was a lifestyle.
"He lived not for simply coaching, but he lived to serve others. Coaching happened to be the vehicle he chose, and he chose well.
"As the biological father of six, Coach Smith served as a surrogate parent to hundreds of students over the years.
"He expected the same behavior and dedication from his teams that he expected from his own children.
"Thomas L Smith, Sr., served as coach for the Howard Tigers and Georgetown Bulldogs from 1958 to 1984.
"During that time, he coached four players who eventually became professional ball players; three played for the NFL, and one for the NBA.
"Coach Smith won 250 football games and led his teams to three State Championships.
"In fact, he rejected a chance to coach in the NFL in order to dedicate his life to the young people of this county.
"We are proud to have Thomas L. Smith, Sr., inducted into the inaugural class of South Carolina’s Football Coaches Hall of Fame.
"Georgetown will remember Tommy Smith not because of the games he won or the titles he earned. Georgetown will remember Tommy Smith because of the hearts he touched and the lives he changed.”
http://www.southstrandnews.com/article/20141010/GTT11/141019990
Former Howard Coach Tommy Smith Makes Hall of Fame
CoachTommy Smith makes Hall of Fame
Monday, May 23, 2011
By Tommy Howard [email protected]
"He left a lasting impression on me. I think about him all the time. Once you play for him, you never forget him." -- BILLY WHITE
Coach Tommy L. Smith will be inducted into the South Carolina Athletic Coaches Hall of Fame on Sunday, July 24. The long-time football and track coach at Howard High School and Georgetown High led his teams to at least 175 wins, his former players say. The exact number isn't known. But what is known is that the Howard Tigers in their blue and gold uniforms won state football championships in 1960 and 1966. Jesse Tullos, retired editor of the Georgetown Times, wrote several articles about "Coach" and about his boys who performed so well on the football field. The online version of this story will have links to some of the articles Tullos wrote. While those boys of days gone by are now middle-aged and older, they can still remember the scores, the tough practices and the discipline instilled in them by "Coach," who was like a second father to many of them. John Henry Smalls is one of those men, and he's helping to organize a bus trip to the banquet in late July. But right now, it's important for anyone who would like to go to the awards banquet at Carolina First Center in Greenville to purchase banquet tickets. They must be paid for by May 28. No tickets will be sold at the door, Smalls said. The cost per person for the bus will be $35, and that can be paid later, Smalls said. The group will leave Georgetown at 7 a.m. on July 24, go to church in Columbia with Pastor Norvel Goff and his congregation and be served dinner. Goff is one of the Howard alumni who played for the Tigers. At 4 p.m. the group will leave for Greenvile, attend the banquet and then return to Georgetown that night.
Plenty to celebrate The man Smalls and others will celebrate was legendary, not only on the football and track fields, but in life. Much of his career was in the segregated South, but Coach taught his guys to deal with life. Plenty of the guys were friends with the white kids who went to Winyah High School. Even though they weren't allowed to buy tickets and go into the stadium to watch the games, some of the Howard guys would climb up in the trees around the football stadium so they could watch their friends play. They'd get together for pick-up games of football, and it was just a bunch of friends having a good time with the game they all loved.
Mack Alston Mack Alston is a coach today at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia. He previously coached at Howard University in Washington, D.C. In his day, he was big in the National Football League. And he got his start with Coach at Howard High in Georgetown. Smith taught typing, shorthand and other business classes, along with his coaching duties: football, track and girls' basketball. He would tell Alston he should be a football player. "He coaxed me into playing." "If not for him, everything in my athletic career would not have happened because he coaxed me into playing football." "He won two championships," Alston said, and that with a small group of players and only four coaches. They did everything, he said. "He didn't have any favorites. He treated you the same. He didn't take any nonsense." The guys wore suits and ties to the games, and they wore a blue and gold uniform. Coach expected you "to represent yourself, the school and the community in a positive and outstanding way. If you didn't he let you know." There was a curfew, and the guys knew they'd better stick to it or they would be punished the next day. "I don't think these kids are mentally tough these days. They wouldn't withstand the type of discipline we did. It would break them," Alston said. "They think everything should be handed to them. These kids feel they are superstars as soon as they put on a uniform." Alston's kids at T.C. Williams are playing for one of the opponents in the movie "Remember the Titans." "They couldn't play for Coach Smith, because they couldn't withstand the pressure he put on them." Alston will be making the trip to the awards banquet. "I'm excited. I'm glad for him. I just wish he was here to witness it. He's well-deserving of it."
Billy White One of the 1966 championship players was Billy White, who lives in Georgetown. He played at Howard from 1965 to 1968. "I'm not bragging, but I ran the first touchdown in that [1966] game." The winning score was 26-34 in Howard's favor, playing Barrs Creek from Lancaster, he said. "I think Coach think we had the big head. He went down to Georgia, got two tough teams from Georgia. That's the only two teams we lost to all year. I think he set us up," White said. "We beat everybody in the state." Along with the football, Coach was tough on the kids in what he expected of them. "He would check your report card after they were given out. If you failed two classes, he put you off the team until your grades got better." "He left John Smalls home one time, and Johnny Alston one time. He was a disciplinarian. He believed in it." Coach was a second father away from home. "He left a lasting impression on me. I think about him all the time. Once you play for him, you never forget him."
Ervin Armstrong When Ervin Armstrong started playing for Coach, it was in 1958. He played for the 1960 championship team. "That was the first championship year they ever had in the history of Howard School," Armstrong said. The game was against Burke High School, in Charleston, and the Howard Tigers won it 7-0. "We had a time getting out of Charleston. Some of the kids from Burke were chasing after us," he said. With the passing of 50 years, he still recalls what Coach said about winning the Lower State Championship in 1960. "He said this is something y'all will remember for the rest of your life. "When we meet to this day, we go back to the old days. Everybody had a nickname. We go back to those. There's never an argument. "We're a bunch of old men in our 70s, and that's one thing I remember."
Raymond Singleton "He was a no-nonsense coach." Singleton said Coach expected every man to get a man. "His philosophy was, you kill a mosquito with an axe. If that didn't do it, you ran over it with a bulldozer." He would also tell the guys it's easy to lose. "I can lose without you." "You didn't miss his practices. When you came to practice, you gave 110 percent." "He taught us, look out for one another. He was like a father figure to all of us." "That's why all of Coach Smith's players are just like brothers to one another. We still have a strong bond to each other, because of Coach."
Freddie Young In 1976 Freddie Young Jr. came to Georgetown from Tuskegee Institute to coach at Howard High School. "The reason I came, I still don't know why," he said. "While I was at Tuskegee, I played football with some of the guys he had coached." In Georgetown, Young coached football and basketball. "When Coach Smith got sick, I helped. A lot of people thought I came here for Coach Smith's job, but I came to coach basketball," Young said. He retired in 2009. Several years ago, he asked Coach Smith to compile information on his coaching career at Howard and Georgetown. "I took it to the S.C. Athletic Coaches Association and nominated him for this position. "It finally came through." "When Coach Smith gave up track, he asked me to take over," Young said. One of the track athletes was Anthuan Maybank, who went on to win a gold medal in the Olympics. Maybank was the first track person who made athlete of the year, Young said. "He's ranked number 10 overall among athletes in the state of South Carolina."
For more on Coach Tommy Smith and his Howard High School teams, you may read the following stories written by now-retired editor Jesse Tullos. COACH, Nov. 11, 2001 1960 Howard championship season is common thread that binds members, Nov. 11, 2001 1966 team was small but it had the right stuff , Nov. 11, 2001 'Coach' Tommy Smith taught life beyond the 35-yard markers, Feb. 2, 2005 From Howard High to NFL, July 7, 2005 Revered football coach Tommy Smith dies, Oct. 10, 2005 Georgetown loses a late-20th century icon, Oct. 10, 2005
Debby Summey: Go Tigers! Howard School in 1946-47
World War II was over. Howard High School was celebrating the return of fellow students who served our country during the war years.
They were also celebrating their first school annual.
The annual cover is dark blue with gold lettering, the school colors being blue and gold.
The inside pages are typical of that time – black and white photographs and illustrations.
The Editor-In-Chief of the annual was Robert L. Alston.
As I read through the annual, I noticed names I’ve heard all my life growing up here in Georgetown.
These are old family names embedded in Georgetown’s history.
Some of them are: Alston, Dunmore, Beck, Atkinson, Carolina, Fraser, Howard, Jenerette, Smalls, Hemingway, Prioleau, Alford, Brown, McKnight, Porcher, McClam, and Wragg.
Of course, there are many other names I recognize, but due to space limitations, I can’t list them all.
J. B. Beck, the school’s principal, advised the graduating seniors to make use of the education they received at Howard.
"It is the wand given you here by the State of South Carolina, school officials, by parents and friends, who have furnished you these opportunities. They justly expect of you, in return, a worthy, useful life.”
He goes on to say, "Don’t fail them. You are not your own. You are bought with a price.”
(I just realized something. If you are not from Georgetown, you may not know that Howard High was an all black school, not merging with Winyah High to finally form a new school, Georgetown High, until many years later.)
The Senior Class History tells us that one hundred, nineteen students entered Howard High as eighth graders in 1943. President of the class was Mattie Daniels.
By 1946, class size had dwindled to ninety-six, eleven of them being World War II veterans who had returned to school.
Those eleven were: Coachman, Gibson, Poinsett, John and Samuel Greene, Young, Washington, McCoy, Harrell, Wragg, and Kinloch.
I love the Class Will, especially since I know some of the people mentioned:
Helen Brown leaves her shapely legs to Audrey Robinson.
Irvin Davis wills his fancy style of hat blocking to Richard Allen.
Dorothy Alford wills a few of her boyfriends to Rebecca Tillman.
Margretta Dunmore wills her pleasing personality to Charles Ann Hemingway.
Evelyn Green bestows upon Mae Grave her ability to leave other girls’ boyfriends alone.
James Davis leaves his ability to catch a football to Herbert Wragg.
Benjamin Jefferson wills his basketball technique to Dennis Campbell.
I always read the last pages of an old annual.
The sponsor ads reveal so much about businesses that existed in the year the annual is published.
A few of the businesses still exist. Unfortunately, most have closed.
Martin’s Bicycle Repair Shop and Grille, 422 Broad St.
Dr. Wm. S. Thompson, Dentist, 210 King St.
U. G. Teele, M.D., 126 Wood St.
Carter’s (Ready to Wear), 801 Front St.
Smoak’s Cleaners, 924 Front St.
The Harlem Café, 231 Meeting St.
To the Class of 1947 and the Georgetown County Museum…thanks for the memories!
This article appeared was posted in the online version of The Georgetown Times on September 20, 2011. http://www.gtowntimes.com/columns/Debby-Summey-Go-Tigers---Howard-School-in-1946-47