Qualla: Kelly Miller High School

Kelly Miller High School: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1920, Kelly Miller came to Clarksburg, West Virginia, to give a lecture on education as a tool of African-American advancement. Miller was at the height of his influence - a Howard University mathematician, sociologist, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and one of the most widely read Black columnists in the country, with weekly essays appearing in dozens of newspapers. The lecture impressed the Clarksburg community so much that local Black leaders voted to rename their high school for him on the spot. The Water Street Colored School became the Kelly Miller Colored School (later Kelly Miller High School) - a name that connected the small institution in north-central West Virginia to one of the major figures in African-American intellectual life.

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Kelly Miller High School: The Building on Water Street

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The school building was constructed in 1902 by Charles D. Ogden, a Harrison County contractor, on what was then Water Street in Clarksburg's African-American neighborhood. It opened in 1903 as the Water Street Colored School - the only public secondary school in north-central Wes...

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Kelly Miller High School: Why It Mattered

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Like most segregated Black schools of the period, Kelly Miller served as much more than a school. The auditorium hosted community meetings, lectures, concerts, and religious services. The gymnasium was the venue for the principal Black social events in Clarksburg. The home econom...

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Kelly Miller High School: The Man Behind the Name

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Kelly Miller himself was born in Winnsboro, South Carolina, in 1863, the year of the Emancipation Proclamation. He graduated from Howard University in 1886 and became the first African-American admitted to Johns Hopkins University, where he studied mathematics, physics, and astro...

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Kelly Miller High School: The Principals

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Two principals defined the school's character. Duncan Huey Kyle, the founding principal in 1903, was one of a group of African-American educators trained in Alabama and sent out across the South and lower Midwest in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to lead the ne...

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Kelly Miller High School: After 1956

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision required the desegregation of public schools, and Kelly Miller closed in 1956 as Black students were integrated into the previously white schools of Clarksburg. The building was used for various educational purposes ov...

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