Chambers County Training School opened on September 29, 1919, for African American students after C. Neal Finley, a local African American educator and merchant, appealed the previous year to the white citizens of LaFayette and Chambers County to contribute to Black community efforts to raise money for a training school. The two-story school was built on land purchased from Nepton and Lucy Adams, merchants and the largest African American landowners in LaFayette at the time. The school held its first high school graduation in 1928. After the building burned in 1948, a more modern structure was built at the same location in 1949. During John P. Powell’s tenure from 1954 to 1976, the school gained another classroom wing, a library, and a gymnasium that also served as the cafeteria. It ceased being a high school in 1969 with the dismantling of the state’s dual system of public education and was renamed Southside Middle School. On November 14, 1999, it was renamed John P. Powell Middle School in honor of longtime educator and principal Mr. John Perry Powell, and it was listed in the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage on August 24, 2022.