Letters: People belong on the State House grounds

Way, way back when, I can recall the market in the median on Columbia’s Assembly Street, with produce, fruit and miscellaneous merchandise on offer.

There were pickup trucks and wagons pulled by trucks and sometimes by horses and mules. At the end of the median, there was a horse fountain.

The State House grounds were used by people who came to town for the market or to go to the shops and stores on Assembly and Main streets.

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There was a cloud, however, in that the State House grounds were segregated: whites on the Sumter Street side and blacks on the Assembly Street side. Whites could walk through the Assembly Street side, but the reverse was not true.

Mayor Steve Benjamin’s idea of using the State House grounds as a front porch for Columbia is just plain wonderful.

Gervais Street west of Main is alive. Main Street itself is faring well with the influx of university students generating pedestrian traffic at night. The First Thursdays thing seems to be doing well.

Even as recently as the early 1980s, there was an annual festival that used the State House grounds and Senate Street. Musicians performed on the steps on the south side of the State House.

Hats off to Mayor Benjamin. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see people picnicking on the grounds?