Finley High School opened in 1923 as Chester Colored High School, originally located one-quarter mile north on McClure Street. In 1927 it was renamed for founding principal Samuel Louis Finley, who had come to Chester in 1905 to join the Loomis Street School. The original 1923 two-story wood frame school and a 1929 brick shop building were built with support from the Julius Rosenwald Foundation. Finley High School moved to this site in 1956. This campus was designed by the architecture firm Lockwood Greene and funded by the South Carolina equalization program, a state effort to preserve segregation by upgrading Black schools. When it opened here in 1956, the school enrolled more than 500 students. The last class graduated from Finley High School in 1970, after which this site became integrated Chester Junior High School. Elliott Richardson served as the high school’s principal throughout its time at this site, and it later became a community center.