E.M. Brown Community Center being rebuilt in Minter

E.M. Brown Community Center organizers are building a new center on the site of a historic school in Minter.

The new building will be on the grounds of the former Street Manual Training School on County Road 38. In 1904, Emanuel M. Brown opened a one-room school that served 18 students. When the school closed in 1972, there were 450 students, and the campus had grown to include multiple buildings including classrooms and dormitories for teachers and students. 

The campus has served as a community center since 1972, and now a new community center is rising up on the site of the former high school.  

The community center will be 40 feet wide and 92 feet long, according to Lionel Smith. Smith was in the last class to graduate from the junior high school in 1972. Today he keeps the history of the school, which is now the E.M. Brown Community Center. He has also been president of the board of directors of the center since 2015.  

Smith said the building will house a 40-foot by 40-foot ballroom as well as a kitchen, restrooms, offices and a janitor’s closet. 

Saturday, May 10 was supposed to be the Community Center’s May Day Celebration fundraiser, but it was postponed due to weather. The May Day Celebration will now be May 31 at the community center. 

There will be a bouncy house, games and lots of vendors. Prizes will be given away every hour. There will also be a classic car and truck show with prizes. And there will be food. The May Day Celebration starts at 10 a.m. 

Attendees will see a newly pored cement pad with all the plumbing and electrical. The structure will be a metal building, and Smith is waiting for the supplier to get measurements and the contractor to start to work.  

Smith hopes that construction will be complete within 30 to 45 days, but weather has been a factor. Once the shell is erected, work on the interior should progress more quickly because it’s not as dependent on weather.  

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Smith said he is donating his work constructing the building, and the center recently received a $1,500 grant from the Black Belt Community Foundation. That money will be used to erect historic markers at the Community Center and at Brown’s House. 

Smith said Brown was the son of sharecroppers who walked to Snow Hill from Richmond, Alabama, to attend school. After graduating from Snow Hill Institute, Brown went to Tuskegee, where he met Booker T. Washington, the founder of Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University.  

Brown left Tuskegee and went to Harvard University at a time when there “was only a handful of us (black students) that was even able to think about getting into that school,” Smith said. After graduating from Harvard, Brown came back to Minter and started Street Manual Training School. 

According to Smith, 1943 was a big year for Street Manual Training School. “1943 is when they put the dormitories for the teachers,” Smith said. Teachers lived on campus during the week and went home on weekends. There were also dormitories for students. The water tower and the vocational building were built in 1943 as well. 

The 10,000-square-foot vocational building housed home economics, the cafeteria, science lab, welding, carpentry, electronics and third through fifth grades. There was also a high school building on campus. 

When the school opened, it was on one acre of land. At its peak it boasted a campus of 281 acres. The campus is now “down to 18 acres,” Smith said.  

Over the years the buildings have been neglected and fell into various states of disrepair. The vocational building is still standing but needs work. Smith said there are plans to renovate that building in the future. The high school building was too far gone and had to be razed. But it is on that site that Smith is building the new community center. 

The E.M. Brown Community Center is located at 263 County Road 38 in Minter.