COLUMBIA, S.C. — It's Black History Month, and one South Carolina Midlands organization is using this month to continue educating people about the Civil Rights Movement in Columbia. Columbia SC 63 gives walking tours down Main Street year-round, but this month, the historic tour is free every Sunday.
"I decided to come on the tour today to learn more about my past and my ancestors," 13-year-old Bryce Moody said.
He took the tour along with Channel Frazier.
"Just learning the rich history of South Carolina," Frazier added. "Because I am a teacher here in South Carolina, and during the tour, I learned so much that I didn't know."
Bobby Donaldson is the founding director of Columbia SC 63, an initiative he started with former Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin to examine and document civil rights history in Columbia.
"I think it's a reminder to us that there's a tremendous amount of history in downtown Columbia, that in some respects Main Street Columbia is a classroom. It is a place to uncover so much history that we do not widely know," Donaldson said. "One of the things we know is that in most history books, the history of civil rights in this state is not widely documented or known."
"And so people are surprised when they learn about important civil rights cases in downtown Columbia," he added. "They are surprised to know that Martin King Jr. And Malcolm X had a presence in this city. They were surprised to know that there were people like Sarah Mae Fleming, who predated Rosa Parks, challenging bus segregation. And so as every year passes, we are discovering that there is more history to uncover."
People are learning more about this through free walking tours during Black History Month, led by guides like Darnell Holland.
"We get a lot of people who are natives from the city, who are traveling from across the state," Holland said. "We get people who are traveling internationally; we get students oftentimes coming from the university. So we get to cover a wide variety of people who want to come and share in this history."
"There's a very interesting quote from Miss Donella Brown Wilson, who says, 'History has no purpose unless you use it.' So, history is a tool that we use to inform people, to educate people, to lift people, to bring people perhaps out of a place of not knowing and to a place where they can know," Holland added.
The tour starts at the State House grounds. Then, attendees can visit the Columbia Museum of Art's Intersection on Main Street exhibit before continuing further down Main Street toward the Nickelodeon Theater.
The exhibit "tells the history of the Black downtown business district," Donaldson said.
As added, it refers to the Washington Street corridor, which was bustling in the 50s and 60s.
"I think with the opportunities we have, and the work we do at Columbia 63 in the Civil Rights Center, we recognize there's a critical need, a pressing need to capture these stories," Donaldson said. "Many of the youngest members of the civil rights movement are now in their 70s and 80s. And so the window is narrowing in terms of the opportunities to tell these stories and so we are urgently working to do just that."
Donaldson is also the University of South Carolina Center for Civil Rights History and Research executive director,
The last free tour of the month is next Sunday at 2 p.m. at the African American History Monument near the Sumter Street side of the South Carolina State House grounds.
