History of Guest/Bethune Elementary School

Bethune Elementary School orginally known as Edgar A. Guest Elementary School was built in 1922 under Greenfield township, it was annexed to the City of Detroit in 1925. The site of Guest was originally occupied by the John Meyers School, which was built in the early 1900s, Guest was built in a direct response to a overflow in the student body at Meyers, the original school was demolished and was rebuilt as the current Guest/Bethune Elementary. When the City of Detroit took over the school in 1925 it received a addition adding 8 more classrooms to the original 8 classroom building. two more additions in 1929 and 1931 would be added as growth continued to grow at Guest. The 1929 addition would add a auditorium and 9 extra classrooms. The 1931 addition would see the additions of a gymnasium, a powerhouse building, and a lunchroom. Guests student body at this time was 1500, through its opening into the 1950s the school hosted a all white student body, as with many Detroit Schools, white flight to the suburbs began to take a toll on student populations at many Detroit Schools throughout the 1950s, and into the 60s. In October 1960, when the Detroit Board of Education determined that they would bus 314, 3rd and 4th graders from two overcrowded, predominantly black elementary schools (McKerrow and Brady) to three nearby predominantly white schools (Guest, Monnier, and Noble). At the end of October 1960 the white students and their parents boycotted the school for 3 days, on the first day of the boycott, 60% of the student population of Guest was absent. As white protestors stood outside the school. Black children were still allowed to enter the school. Interviews from the second day of the protest from black parents describe the atomsphere of that like the deep segregated south. In total the boycott would last 3 days. By 1969 the once all white school was now 60% black, this shift made black families in the community to attempt to guide the curriculum of Guest, later this would also see greater control of the hiring and firing process inside the school. The white principal of Guest was removed and replaced by the schools first black principal in 1969. In 1971 a new Elementary School was built in 1971 down the street and both schools were renamed to the current names of Bethune, both school would operated into the 2000s with declining enrollment every year, by 2003 enrollment at Bethune was 944, and by 2008 it was down to 582. In 2010 both schools closed along with the nearby Cooley High School, the newer Bethune school was sold to a church however the orginal Guest school has remained vacant since, and has seen significant scrapping, the original building was sold to the city of Detroit in 2015.