Rev. Dr. Alvin Hathaway Sr. remembers when Upton — the historically Black West Baltimore neighborhood and cultural epicenter known for treasured landmarks like the Royal Theater — was home to the Mitchells, a family of civil rights firebrands famously dubbed “The Black Kennedys.”
Hathaway, born in 1951, was a youngster in the Mitchell family’s heyday and grew up with them as neighbors. Little George was his companion on the playground. And his dad, whom Hathaway called “Uncle Clarence,” was a loving male role model in his early years. Unbeknownst to young Hathaway then, he was much more than that.
Born in Baltimore City in 1911, Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. served as chief lobbyist of the NAACP for close to 30 years. Mitchell was nicknamed “The 101st Senator” for helping to pass crucial civil rights legislation. From 1938 until his death in 1984, the activist was married to Juanita Jackson, known as the first Black woman to practice law in Maryland. Including George, they shared four children — two of whom became state senators — along with several grandchildren who made their mark on politics.
“Because of the Mitchells, it was nothing to see historic national people in the community — Sammy Davis Jr., Jackie Robinson, Wilma Rudolph, Rosa Parks… it was nothing. [Their family] attracted those people because of their quality and gravitas,” said Hathaway, an activist himself and a former pastor at West Baltimore’s historic Union Baptist Church.
He’s also the president and CEO of Beloved Community Service Corporation, a nonprofit aiding underserved communities in Baltimore.
Hathaway wants his latest project, Upton’s newly-opened Justice Thurgood Marshall Amenity Center, to honor the legacy of the Mitchells and bring greatness to West Baltimore. The building at 1315 Division Street used to house P.S. 103, or Henry Highland Garnet School, where Marshall attended elementary school. In it, he sees the potential for even more changemakers to come out of the neighborhood.
“Quite honestly, I have the same feeling about the potential of this building that [I get] when I look into the eyes of my grandsons,” Hathaway said.
“Quite honestly, I have the same feeling about the potential of this building that [I get] when I look into the eyes of my grandsons.”
Rev. Dr. Alvin Hathaway Sr.
“I think the biggest hope that I have is that two or three years from now, we’ll see young people walking the streets of Baltimore with the feeling that they are a part of a ‘Justice league,’” he said.
“We’re part of this cadre of participants in the Justice Thurgood Marshall Amenity Center. We now have superpowers, and we’re going to go out and transform our community.”
A neighborhood gathering space meant for locals of all ages, Hathaway hopes the center will prove that rehabilitating urban properties is both achievable and worth the effort.
“People invest in buildings near the Inner Harbor,” Hathaway said. “Those are good, bankable deals. I wanted to prove that we’ve got a good, bankable deal in West Baltimore.”
About five years and $15 million in the making, the refurbished building will serve as “the hub of the community,” partnering with various institutions like the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the National Park Service to increase accessibility to learning in West Baltimore. Free courses on the likes of aviation, artificial intelligence, and medical protocol will live under one roof.
“People won’t have to go outside of the neighborhood to find resources,” Hathaway said. “They can come to a place where people know their names, know who they are, support them, affirm them, and challenge them to be great. I believe that greatness resides in everyone. We need to help them discover it.”
Leading up to its July 2 opening, the new building welcomed in hundreds of guests with a VIP reception and a jazz brunch for alumni. Hathaway, who says that tenants will be moving in between now and Oct. 1, excitedly predicts that it will have received more than 1,000 visitors by then.
The now-retired pastor was inspired more than 20 years ago by the city’s former mayor Sheila Dixon — then a city council member and the head of an initiative to restore P.S. 103 — to refurbish the facility. He took action in 2019, three years after the school was nearly wiped out by a tragic fire.
“I’m a faith person,” he said. “I operate off of the idea that where [God] guides, he provides.”
Initially, Hathaway lacked the funds to renovate the building, but he “had people who believed in the vision.”
With time investors joined, and the reconstruction process began in 2022. To minimize the presence of carcinogens, along with the amount of waste that ended up in landfills, Hathaway and his construction team were careful to ensure that all materials were eco-friendly. Equally important was the task of recreating some of P.S. 103’s original designs.
“Beloved Community Services Corporation believes in culturally sensitive and culturally relevant community development. The story of the property — who lived there, its position in time — is just as important as its restoration,” Hathaway said.
With its structural integrity diminished by the fire — not to mention severe mold and water damage in its aftermath — repairing the first level of the school required help from a historic wood restorer. Pale blue walls adorned with white trim and tin ceilings, as were present when the school was built more than 100 years ago, combine to paint a picture of what Henry Highland Garnet School looked like when Marshall was a young student.
Pale blue walls adorned with white trim and tin ceilings, as were present when the school was built more than 100 years ago, combine to paint a picture of what Henry Highland Garnet School looked like when Marshall was a young student.
The second floor, destroyed completely by the 2016 fire, afforded Hathaway a clean slate. He was able to add elevators, bathrooms, a “congressional assembly room” with space to seat more than 200 people, and a state-of-the-art movie theater, which will offer first-run movie showings.
The movie theater is a point of pride for Hathaway.
“When I have young people on the second floor to see a movie matinee, they’re going to experience the same feeling as if they were in an IMAX theater,” Hathaway said.
“That’s what I want them to feel. I want them to feel, emotionally, what excellence means and what quality means. When you impact people that way, it can lift their aspirations.”
In the same vein, the second floor’s alumni room will offer former P.S. 103 pupils a space to celebrate pride in their former school and share those memories with young people.
“The alumni room will afford me and others a good opportunity to revisit who attended, [remember] who our friends were, and recapture memories that slipped away,” explained Jeanne Hitchcock, who attended P.S. 103 from 1951 to 1958.
In addition to reviving cherished friendships, the accomplished local activist — well-known for holding various state government positions over 40 years — looks forward to “observing the impact that the center will have on the community and kids it serves.”
The same is true of Hathaway, whose grandsons, aged three, five, and eight, were with him at the building’s ribbon cutting ceremony.
“This is not a parent feeling. This is a grandpop feeling. I feel like I’ve been the custodian of an amazing property — a major legacy and history — and now I can see it in real time. It’s going to grow beyond my expectations.”
Hathaway thinks Marshall would feel something similar were he alive to see his elementary school today.
“I believe that Thurgood Marshall, just knowing the nature of his personality, would say, ‘Baltimore, why did this take so long?’” he said.
“There’s a saying that the time is always right to do right. Even though it may have taken a long time, I think we’ve done right by his legacy. We’ve done right by the community. We’ve done right by [the building’s] history. I think history will record that the time was right to do right.”
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