GHCC sponsors Butler Heritage event
Founders and board members of the Butler Heritage Foundation gathered for a photo during the GHCC event last week. PHOTO BY STEPHAN DREW
By Stephan Drew, Editor
editor@newsandpress.net
Inside the walls of the historic Butler Auditorium, where generations of students once gathered to learn, sing, and dream, a large crowd gathered on Wednesday, August 26, to remember why this ground matters. The Greater Hartsville Chamber of Commerce (GHCC) brought its 411 Series Program to 1103 Sixth Avenue — the original building constructed to house Butler School — in a gathering sponsored by the Butler Heritage Foundation (BHF) that felt less like a business luncheon and more like a homecoming.
Butler alumna and BHF Chairperson Sheila Squire opened the program with a warm welcome and a video retracing the full arc of the Butler story: its founding, its closing, the birth of the Butler Heritage Foundation, and the decades-long labor of love that has kept the campus — and its legacy — alive.
For over eighty years, Butler School stood as a cornerstone of Hartsville’s African-American community, guiding generations of students through the injustices of segregation with an unwavering commitment to dignity and excellence. That mission was set in motion by Dr. Henry Hannibal Butler, whose vision shaped not just a school, but a community of leaders.
Dr. Alvin Heatley, Butler alumnus and former BHF Chairperson, reflected on that legacy before the crowd. “We want Hartsville’s children and others interested to know what Butler graduates have contributed locally, around the country and the world,” Heatley said, describing how Dr. Butler and his faculty instilled in young African-Americans the strength and integrity to overcome the everyday obstacles of segregated life.
“This campus is an example of what you can do when you have a group of people with one shared purpose,” Heatley told the audience — a line that could just as easily describe the founding of Butler School as it does the fight to save it decades later.
Butler’s story has never been a simple one. The school traces its roots to the early 1900s, serving Hartsville’s African-American community through several names before officially becoming Butler School in 1939. A devastating fire destroyed the original administrative building in 1961, yet the school pressed on, educating generation after generation. After 82 years of service, Butler High School closed its doors following the 1982–83 school year, and the campus — steeped in memory — was put up for sale to commercial developers.
It would have been easy for that chapter to be the last. Instead, in the fall of 1991, alumni, former faculty, and community members refused to let Butler’s story end in a real estate listing. They organized the Butler Heritage Foundation with a bold mission: rescue the abandoned, water-damaged, fire-scarred campus and transform it into something the community could hold onto forever.
Founding Chairperson Jannie Harriott, a Butler alumna herself, was instrumental in forming the Concerned Citizens for Butler, persuading the Darlington County Board of Education to deed the school to the City of Hartsville who later deeded the property to the Butler Heritage Foundation for restoration. She recalled for the audience how the effort began humbly — with $20 memberships — and grew, membership by membership, into the thriving organization it is today.
Through a deed and lease agreement, the Darlington County School Board transferred five campus buildings to the City of Hartsville, which in turn leased them to the Foundation for community use. A pivotal $350,000 grant from the Byerly Foundation in 2008 helped complete major renovations, transforming a crumbling campus into a vibrant civic anchor once again.
Now, 35 years after its founding, the Butler Heritage Foundation has turned the old campus into exactly what its founders envisioned: a living, breathing community center that carries Butler’s mission into the present.
The campus now hosts renovated facilities and numerous programs ensuring that children still learn on the same hallowed ground. Local youth organizations — including the Pee Dee Boys and Girls Club of Hartsville and Darlington County Council on Aging — along with tutorial programs, fill the buildings with the same energy that once defined Butler’s classrooms. The Butler Gym welcomes senior citizen programs, health fairs, and blood drives, while the campus grounds regularly host community meetings, worship services, family celebrations, and a museum space preserving decades of Butler memorabilia for future generations.
Each year, the Foundation’s commitment to memory and community culminates in Butler Heritage Week, a beloved tradition drawing alumni home from across the country. This year marked the 35th Annual Butler Heritage Week, held June 26 through July 4, 2026, and packed with events that captured both the joy and the reverence of the Butler legacy.
From the golf course to the gospel stage to the parade route, Heritage Week is more than a celebration — it is proof that Butler’s community never left.
The Greater Hartsville Chamber of Commerce’s 411 Series exists to spotlight local voices sharing knowledge and building community connection — and few stories embody that spirit as powerfully as Butler’s. What began as a school for African-American children during segregation, endured a devastating fire, and faced the wrecking ball of commercial development has instead become one of Hartsville’s most treasured cultural landmarks — sustained not by government mandate, but by the sheer will of alumni who refused to let its story end.
As Dr. Heatley reminded the room, Butler’s campus stands today as living proof of what a community bound by shared purpose can accomplish. Thanks to the tireless dedication of the Butler Heritage Foundation, that purpose endures — not just in preserved brick and mortar, but in classrooms full of children, gymnasiums full of neighbors, and a heritage week full of homecoming smiles and laughter, year after year.