Ward One organization encourages learning, revitalizing history through day-long trip

School’s back in session for a historical organization, and this year, the group is kicking off with an out-of-town field trip.

The Ward One Reunion Organization encourages people to learn the “rich history” of Columbia’s old Ward One neighborhood and engage in community events hosted by the organization. The group was founded in 1991 by some former Ward One residents to spend time with each other and to remind people that the neighborhood once existed before it was overtaken by urban growth.

The historically Black area was bounded by Pickens, Gervais, Heyward and Huger streets in the core of downtown Columbia that’s now virtually all commercial.

October’s Historical Freedom Day Trip is one of two biennial events the organization hosts. The idea is to learn about African-American history around South Carolina. 

The importance of the trip is to be remind everyone “that history repeats itself,” said Kim Goodman, the organization’s co-president who still works as a teacher. “We know, ‘Hey, we’ve already done this.’ Or we can look back. We can refer to how they dealt with a certain situation.”

The group has been to other places, including in Georgia and North Carolina. Goodman said the trip’s impact has “more of a touching hit” when learning about one’s own state’s history. 

This trip will involve two stops at museums. The first stop is at the Cecil Williams Civil Rights Museum in Orangeburg. The museum was designed to present an “unbiased, objective view of significant events” in the state through photography and records.

Goodman once heard Williams speak and said he had a “wealth of information” to convey. Williams is a photographer who has documented Black life across South Carolina for decades.

“I was just so mesmerized, and I wanted to share that with the Ward One group,” said Goodman, who learned of Williams’ work while attending a lecture with Raymond Richardson, Ward One’s treasurer.

The second stop of the day will be at the International African American Museum in Charleston, which opened in June 2023. Its website says the museum “tells the unvarnished stories of the African American experience across generations, the trauma and triumph that gave rise to a resilient people.”

The trip to Charleston and Orangeburg will help group members see what those places can teach them, Richardson said.

“And a lot of people hadn’t been nowhere,” Richardson said. “So they need to go out and venture out to see what’s going on at other locations, how things used to be.”

Evelyn Jefferson, the Ward One Reunion Organization’s secretary, said the organization wants to get younger people involved so “the legacy will continue.”

“One thing we want to learn is that it’s just really keeping our history alive,” Jefferson said. “A lot of us are getting older now. And we want Ward One to live on, even (after) we are dead and gone.”