We routinely traverse these streets and these grounds and don't think about what used to
be there, who used to be there, and why they're no longer there.
I collaborate with faculty member in media arts, film and media studies.
We're supervising a team-taught class that is building out a mobile application for public
history surrounding Columbia and the University of South Carolina.
Ward 1 was a voting district about a mile square that includes the State House and the
University of South Carolina, and up until the 1960s it included a vibrant African-American
neighborhood.
I was born at 514 College Street, a little clapboard house situated between Pulaska Street
and Hugo Street.
I never saw any hunger days.
I was not a hungry baby.
So the best of what was the best, I had it.
So I never was a raggedy, dirty little baby, and so I was always a little clean, you know.
Thank you mama.
But growing up in Ward 1, it was brutal.
Ward 1 was declared a blighted area and urban renewal out of existence so the University
could take over the land.
I'm creepy blight.
I creep in when you don't make small repairs in time.
Just look what I can do.
Progress, as simple as that, progress came.
You can help beat creepy blight, keep Columbia beautiful.
The only thing standing between that vision was those ugly little 514, little clapboard
houses, little shacks and little stuff like that that dotted the community.
It was just like any other kind of genocide or kind of program where you get rid of the
other people and then come back in with your master plan.
And to be part of it now, to tell my story for that app that's going to be done.
Apps, applications, whatever that is, young lady, that is just so full over my head.
You know what I mean?
How to develop it and all of that, that's why I talked to Dr. Butte.
What we're building out is an app that will again be geolocative so it will have highlighted
places on a map as the Interactor wanders through the neighborhood and gets close to
one of the points.
The app will ping them with information.
You know, if you're on Assembly Street at college and looking at the Cougar Center and
looking down a little bit further south to the Darla Moore Business School, you will
be notified that you were near 827 Assembly Street and we had where you could see a photograph
of the house that used to stand right there.
We have one group this semester that's doing a simulation of what would have been WOIC
radio station back in the 1960s, late 50s and early 1960s.
So the ambient sound will come in the background.
The Ward 1 organization members and former residents were talking about music that they
listened to.
They were talking about the juke joints.
My dad had a little juke joint called Brother Jones Barbecue Joint.
I said the student who was the music student in the class really found that compelling.
And so based on that, he's like, we could have a radio station.
So they did a lot of research about Booker T. Washington High School.
I graduated Booker T. Washington June the 2nd, 1958.
Went back through the yearbooks, went and studied the channels that exist in the Booker
T. Washington Auditorium Facility.
When are we going to get our cap?
Hopefully we'll have that for them the next year or so.
I think the Ward 1 community, the former residents and the Ward 1 organization members
are really fabulous people.
They have amazing stories to tell and we're very excited that they're sharing, that they
trust us enough to allow us to present their stories and their history in the way that
we have chosen to do so.
With Ward 1, if it is possible to walk the streets and hear the voices and see the images,
maybe you can understand what was there before.
