Aspirations have always been part Columbia’s Historic Waverly, a center of South Carolina’s civil rights movement. Two men, James Baker and Frank Houston, now say it’s time to again turn dreams to reality and restore Waverly, but it remains a struggle.
Read more →Welcome Table SC employs candid conversations to help students understand how race affects their lives and the lives of those around them.
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Walter Liniger is an unlikely blues professor. He isn’t African-American and he isn’t from the U.S. He’s Swiss, and his passion brought him here to study under blues legends. In his USC classes, you won’t find a textbook or PowerPoint. Instead, students learn about themselves through playing music.
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Taekwondo black belt Ulysses Cornelius’ chances of recovery were slim after a two-year battle with infection left him without both legs. But the faith-driven 59-year-old defied the odds by returning to his karate class, where he teaches out of his wheelchair and ministers to local youths.
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Hyatt Park is still a work in progress, but Robert Geter says it’s in a much better state now than it was when he arrived as recreation leader in August 2011. After working with police to weed out negative influences, Geter happily looks back at the turnaround in the North Columbia park.
Read more →By Andrew Barnwell July 23, 2013 Tom Simpkins is remembered by many older African-Americans in Aiken and Graniteville as one of the wealthiest men in Aiken, with a financial empire of area nightclubs and restaurants. As one of the few self-made African-American entrepreneurs in the area, Simpkins made his money and bought his land...
Read more →By Caitlyn McGuire July 22, 2013 At first sight, Columbia looks like a city composed of a large football stadium, some office towers and numerous fast-food chains. Except for a few exceptions, like the Vista, over the past few decades redevelopment has largely meant out with the old and in with the new. This...
Read more →By Caitlyn McGuire July 9, 2013 From the front porch of their Pickens Street house, Frances and Matthew Addison can look out at what seems to be an almost ideal city neighborhood tucked away just beside USC’s campus. Along Wheeler Hill’s winding roads are tall brick houses, neighbors washing their cars and walking their...
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