The last of her class: Surviving member of Lexington segregated school turns 107

Thelma Strother may have lived all her life within the 12 square miles of Lexington, but she has inhabited multiple worlds during her century in town.

Strother was born in 1919 in a house on Old Cherokee Road, a wooden cabin with no indoor plumbing, at a time when Lexington had fewer than 900 residents. As a young girl, she walked to school and rode in a wagon to go to church or buy groceries.

She went to primary and secondary school at the Rosenwald school in Lexington, among the state-of-the-art educational facilities for Black students in the segregated South. The school was built in 1928-29, through the Rosenwald schools program, and drew students from towns miles away such as Pelion, Gilbert and Irmo.

Strother was part of the pioneering class of students at Lexington Rosenwald, said Carson Wise, an alumnus and the school historian.

Around 500 Rosenwald schools were constructed in South Carolina, but only 40-some still exist. 

Student in a segregated school

Strother is the oldest-known surviving Rosenwald student in the state, said Valinda Littlefield, associate professor of history at the University of South Carolina, who has conducted a study of S.C. Rosenwald schools.

Strother’s schooling, the historian said, reflects the aspirations of Black people during that time to obtain better education. Hers was an era when schools for Black children were systematically underfunded, overcrowded and not easily accessible. 

“She is one of many who wanted access to education,” Littlefield said, “and a Rosenwald school provided her access to education.”

Strother, who turns 107 on Monday, Sept. 21, can no longer engage in conversations. She spends her days in bed, at the house on Hendrix Street that her late husband, Johnnie Strother Jr., built in the mid-1940s after he came back from military deployment during World War II.

The accounts about Thelma Strother’s life came from interviews with all of her four surviving children, supplemented by family and school records.  

Thelma Strother, whose maiden name was Thelma Powell, did well in school and in sports, said one of her sons, Phillip Strother. Her favorite subjects were reading and history, and she played on the Rosenwald basketball team. 

After finishing school in 1936, given the limited employment opportunities for Black people at that time, her children said she did manual labor. They remembered her serving as a housekeeper to two white families in Lexington and working at local vegetable farms. 

Her children spoke about the separate but parallel worlds of white and Black people, not being allowed into certain businesses in town or having to enter through the back door.

“It was normal to be segregated during the time,” said another son, Douglas Strother, 83. “You lived in it. You didn’t think anything about it.”

Advocating for social change

Thelma Strother was largely a stay-at-home mom while her three boys and three girls were growing up. All her kids had gone to Rosenwald, where she became an active member of the parent-teacher association.

They said she emphasized the importance of education to create a better life, resulting in multiple bachelor’s and master’s degrees among her children, plus a doctorate.

“She said, ‘If you can read, you can go any place,” recalled Phillip Strother, 86. “I didn’t want to go pick cotton, working on farms.”

During the Civil Rights Movement, her children said, she participated in social action, calling for racial integration in schools. 

Before integration took place in the Lexington One school district, when Black families were offered a choice to attend white schools, her daughter Collette Strother said, her mom moved her to Lexington Middle School in the mid-1960s. Her youngest sibling was transferred to Lexington Elementary School. 

In 1969, the year that Lexington One integrated, Thelma Strother was among a group of Black community members who attended the school board meeting to present a list of grievances, according to The State newspaper’s reporting at that time.

The group’s complaints included the lack of Black people at policymaking levels in the public school system and the disproportionately low number of Black teachers. 

The modernizing world

When her youngest child, Miriam Leaphart, was attending Claflin University in the late 1970s, Thelma Strother picked her up from the Orangeburg campus every weekend.

“She drove a little yellow Mustang,” Leaphart, 69, said. “She loved that car.” 

Thelma Strother remained an active member of St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church until several years ago, when her mobility sharply declined. Before that, Leaphart said, her mom cooked every day, with her specialties being fried chicken and collard greens.

On a recent morning at Thelma Strother’s house, the centenarian lay in bed, watching a game show on TV. She was surrounded by framed photos of her children, grandchildren and her husband Johnnie, who died in 1979.

She faced a window looking out onto Hendrix Street, where a parade to celebrate her birthday is set to pass by on Saturday, Sept. 19. It’s an annual event her family and friends have organized since she turned 100 years old.

She sat on her porch during last year's parade, surrounded by dozens of friends and relatives. This year, she’ll be watching from her bed. 

Tiffany Tan has been a journalist in the U.S. and abroad for more than 20 years. Contact her on Facebook at Reporter Tiffany Tan or 839-223-4652.