The Drew Park Pool Sharks, circa 1950s, with Coach T.S. Martin (far left) and Charles Bolden Sr. (far right).
By the turn of the 20th century, African American suburbs had begun to crop up on the periphery of Columbia, encouraged by improved infrastructure, expanding public transportation, and downtown commercial growth. Some of these neighborhoods were specifically planned, like Old Shandon. Others were more organic and even amorphous, such as Lower Waverly and its sister African American community northeast of the city, Kendalltown.
In the case of Kendalltown, the earliest African American residents made their homes during the 1890s on some 50 singleacre lots carved out of farm land formerly cultivated by Dr. Francis D. Kendall, a prosperous physician and fowl enthusiast in Columbia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Kendall’s farm was located in the far northeast corner of today’s Kendalltown-Barhamville neighborhood, on the previous site of the South Carolina Female Collegiate Institute, which operated from 1828 to 1866 and burned down in 1869. With Barhamville Road serving as a sort of central axis, the suburb established on Kendall’s subdivision ballooned southward and westward, comprising all the land east of the Southern Railroad line, north of Elmwood Avenue, west of Two Notch Road and south of Beltline Boulevard.
As it expanded geographically, so, too, did the neighborhood evolve into a diverse and multifaceted black community. Also variously referred to as Barhamville, Edgewood, and C.A. Johnson, the historic Kendalltown neighborhood was home to a variety of black professionals and middle to lower class workers, including prominent local figures such as controversial politician Rev. Richard Carroll, teacher-librarian Ethel Bolden and her NASA astronaut son Charles Bolden Jr., highly successful swimming coach and athletic director Thomas S. Martin, and owner of the Baxley grocery chain Manning H. Baxley.
Like Waverly to the south, the Kendalltown- Barhamville neighborhood was largely self-sufficient during the era of segregation, providing its residents with groceries, barber shops, libraries, churches, parks, and schools. Education thrived at the Rosenwald funded Leevy School (1927); the mid-century, state-of-the-art W.A. Perry Junior High; and the neighborhood’s long-time educational nucleus C.A. Johnson High School.
Baptist and A.M.E. churches played significant roles in providing community cohesion, and a visit from Malcolm X brought Waverly Street’s Temple of Islam and its Muslim population into the city limelight in 1963. Drew Park was a recreational gem of Barhamville-Kendalltown and furnished African Americans in Columbia with their first city pool in 1950. The “Drew Park Pool Sharks” churned out successive championships during the 1950s and 1960s.
As the saying goes, “though much is lost, much remains.” Though historic community hubs like Jaggers Terrace and Saxon Homes, both 1950sera public housing complexes, no longer stand, many streetscapes in Barhamville-Kendalltown remain essentially unaltered since the 1930s- 1950s, including houses, churches, and schools that have long sheltered the soul of this historically vibrant African American neighborhood. These buildings testify to the perseverance, creativity, and generosity that characterized Columbia’s black community during the eras of segregation and Jim Crow.
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