West Virginia's 1872 constitution and subsequent legislation mandated racially segregated schools - a system that lasted until 1956 in practice, two years after Brown v. Board ruled school segregation unconstitutional. By the 1920s, the Black population of Kanawha County had grown substantially with the coal and salt economies of the upper Kanawha Valley, and the existing facilities for Black secondary education were obviously inadequate. The Kanawha County Board of Education built two new Black high schools in the 1920s: Garnet in Charleston and Booker T. Washington near London. The investment was real but limited; per-pupil spending in West Virginia's Black schools remained well below per-pupil spending in white schools throughout the entire segregation era.

The building's architectural style - Streamline Moderne, characterized by horizontal lines, rounded corners, and a stripped-down industrial aesthetic - was unusual for a rural Kanawha County school in 1925. Most schools of the era were Colonial Revival or Tudor in style; Streamline Moderne would not become broadly popular for institutional buildings until the late 1930s. The L-shaped plan, the wire-brick exterior (a then-fashionable material with a hard glazed finish), and the tile-block rear section gave the school a distinctive presence in a landscape otherwise composed of wooden coal-camp houses and modest brick commercial buildings. It was a real school building, designed seriously, even within the constraints of the segregated system.

From 1925 to 1956, the school educated Black students from the small towns and mining camps of the eastern Kanawha Valley - London, Cabin Creek, Ward, Eskdale, Cedar Grove. Students came from miles away, some boarding with families closer to the school. The curriculum mirrored white high schools' offerings within the resource limitations: English, mathematics, history, science, with industrial arts and home economics tracks. Athletic teams competed in the West Virginia Athletic Union, the segregated Black athletic conference. School plays, band concerts, and graduation exercises followed the same patterns as elsewhere. For three decades, the school functioned as the secondary education option for a substantial section of the valley's Black population - and as a community institution as much as an educational one.

Brown v. Board was decided in 1954. West Virginia integrated its schools in 1956, two years after the ruling. The Booker T. Washington High School building no longer served as a high school; the students were absorbed into previously white facilities. The building was renamed Grant Junior High School, then Grant Elementary, and continued in those roles until June 1986, when the school closed for good. After 1986, the building stood empty for several years. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. Today the building serves as the Booker T. Washington Community Center, run by local nonprofit organizations including the Upper Kanawha Valley Senior Activity Center. The same brick and tile-block walls that once housed segregated education now house community programs serving all residents of the area.

From the air, the Booker T. Washington school building sits on the south bank of the Kanawha River near the small community of London, between Charleston upstream and Cedar Grove downstream. The L-shaped plan distinguishes the building from the surrounding houses. The Kanawha River flows past to the north, with the New River Coalfield's tributary creeks coming in from the south. The terrain transitions here from the broad lower Kanawha Valley near Charleston into the narrower upper valley as the river bends toward its New River headwaters. Small coal-camp settlements line the riverbank. The school's presence and intact condition is a small visible remnant of a system that was meant to be permanent and was not.