Fun and learning go together at Saturday’s Jubilee Festival
There are dozens of reasons to attend Saturday’s Historic Columbia’s 38th Annual Jubilee: Festival of Black History & Culture, but here are two: it will be super fun and you might learn a thing or two about a remarkable Columbia family.
First the fun part. This year’s Jubilee will feature a variety of live R&B, hip-hop, gospel and jazz music from South Carolina performers, including Collette, Katera, The Benedict College Concert Choir, Reverend Matthew Mickens and The Highway Travelers. Guests also can enjoy a stand-up comedy performance by Akintunde, historic storytelling, demonstrations of broom and sweet grass basket making, and family-friendly activities and games, including the Jubilee Quest, blacksmith workshops, face painting and marble making. Throughout the day, tours of the Mann-Simons Site and the Modjeska Monteith Simkins House ($1) and African American Historic Sites ($2 bus tour) will be available. In addition, outdoor vendors will be selling food and crafts.
What you can learn from the Mann-Simons family, though, is virtually unlimited.
It starts with the facts: Celia Mann was a freed slave who worked as a midwife in Columbia and was instrumental in establishing the city’s First Calvary Baptist Church. From there, though, stories of fierce determination (Celia reportedly walked from Charleston to Columbia in the early 1840s), entrepreneurial spirit (the site was home to a number of prosperous businesses) and family (Celia and second husband Bill Simons’ descendants owned the property until 1970) abound. Today, after 10 years of research and archaeological study, an even broader picture of the family has emerged. It’s part of the new exhibit that will be unveiled at Jubilee.
The Jubilee Festival is free and runs from 11 a.m.-6 p.m. along Richland Street near the Mann-Simons Cottage.
The event is free; for more information, visit www.historiccolumbia.org
This story was originally published September 16, 2016 at 11:00 AM with the headline "Fun and learning go together at Saturday’s Jubilee Festival."