Benjamin: What one Columbia family’s adversity and perseverance teach us
After two years of extensive work to the building, grounds and exhibits, Historic Columbia will reopen the Mann-Simons Site to the public at the 38th annual Jubilee Festival on Saturday.
Thanks to modern structural and paint analysis, extensive archival research and archaeological evidence, the rehabilitated house and its new exhibits tell a rich story of the multiple generations of the African-American family who lived, worked and prospered on this block for 130 years, beginning in the 1840s. The lives they led in antebellum Columbia, through the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Jim Crow era and into the early civil rights years give context to the city we are today.
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A fresh look at one of Columbia’s most historic properties
Photos from last year’s Jubilee-Festival of Heritage
Age-old traditions tell stories of African-American history at Jubilee: Festival of Heritage
Tour of African-American sites retraces routes of progression
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Celia Mann was enslaved at her birth in Charleston in 1799. We don’t know how she gained her freedom; we only know she later became a member of Columbia’s small but important community of free people of color and that she made a living as a midwife. This was well before the Civil War, when almost all Africans and African-Americans in South Carolina were enslaved. Records indicate that she lived on the property at Richland and Marion streets as early as 1843 with her husband, Ben Delane. After Delane left Columbia, Mann remained in her home with at least one of her four daughters. Mann was instrumental in founding Calvary Baptist Church, hosting the earliest church services and meetings on her property in 1865 after the Civil War.
Celia Mann died in 1867, and her eldest daughter, Agnes Jackson, inherited the property. Jackson replaced her mother’s earlier house with the building that remains today, a structure erected between late 1872 and early 1883. Agnes raised her seven children in this home. Agnes’ sons, John Lucius Simons and Charles Hall Simons, established businesses and lived in modern homes on the family’s land. They and other family members prospered as African-American entrepreneurs and business owners in a time when society was structured to make it hard for blacks to achieve success.
Agnes died in 1907, and her son Charles and his wife, Amanda Green Simons, inherited the property. The couple ran a grocery store and were landlords of three newly built, two-story rental houses, which they mostly rented to white tenants. They were successful in business, vocal in politics, leaders in their church and enjoyed prominent standing in the community.
After Charles’ death in 1933, Amanda withdrew from running the businesses but remained a landlord for the residences and tenant-run businesses until her death in 1960, when the property passed to her niece, Bernice Robinson Conners. In 1970, eminent domain proceedings forced Bernice to sell her family’s long-held land to the Columbia Housing Authority for the high-rise apartment building still standing today. A grassroots movement helped preserve the old home as a historic house museum and center for African-American culture, which opened in 1978. Today, Mann-Simons family members are school teachers, business owners and government workers in Columbia, across the South and in other parts of the country.
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IF YOU’RE GOING
This free outdoor festival brings artisans, dancers, musicians and storytellers together to celebrate South Carolina’s black history and culture on the grounds of the Mann-Simons Site in downtown Columbia.
11 am-6 pm
1403 Richland Street, Columbia
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The Mann-Simons family story is the story of so many chapters in Columbia’s history: free blacks’ lives before the Civil War, African-Americans prospering and building a community after the Civil War, family members leaving Columbia to go north in search of a better future, Columbia’s black leaders challenging racism in the Jim Crow era, landed African-Americans being forced to sell their family property and even the beginnings of the historic preservation movement in our African-American community.
It is a complicated story of adversity and perseverance, of obstacles and achievements. It is one family’s story that is representative of the lives of many other families who make up our history and shape the city we are today.
I invite you to explore the new exhibits at the Mann-Simons Site and discover how this one family’s struggles and successes may not be so different from yours.
Mr. Benjamin is the mayor of Columbia; contact him at skbenjamin@columbiasc.net.
This story was originally published September 11, 2016 at 6:13 PM with the headline "Benjamin: What one Columbia family’s adversity and perseverance teach us."