2 weeks Ago
There would have been music. Dancing. Refreshments too, no doubt.
But we don’t know what kind of any of that, nor do we know what we’re most curious about: Who are these joyful people in this 1943 photograph ? We know so many other things about it, but not who they are. Or were. “They’re not here anymore,” said Margaret Dunlap, local history manager with Richland Library’s Walker Local History and Family Center, where the photo is archived.
Taken during World War Two in Columbia, it shows adults in their prime. It’s not likely any of these revelers at the Daughter Elks Dance are still dancing on earth. Gone as well is the historically important and much-used building where the dance, with its crepe paper streamers and guests in evening clothes, occurred.
The Howard Community Center, in operation 30-plus years near the corner of Hampton and Lincoln streets, had once been Howard School, Columbia’s first public school for Black children. Partially funded by the Freedmen’s Bureau and named for Oliver O. Howard, first commissioner of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, the school operated at this location from 1869 to 1926.
When it moved to a two-story brick building at 1716 Williams St., the original frame school building became a broom factory. Then, in 1941, it was repurposed into a community center for the families who lived nearby.
Their neighborhood? The Seaboard Park Area. North of Gervais Street and south of the Arsenal Hill neighborhood and Governor’s Mansion complex, it was up one of Columbia’s many hills from the Congaree River. “This was a thriving African American neighborhood full of churches, a school and mom-and-pop stores,” Dunlap said, pointing to wide grassy areas, large brick and concrete buildings and paved parking lots where small frame homes with swept yards huddled a half-century ago.
She explained how the neighborhood was working class, "very dense." A sloping terrain and lack of plumbing led to impoverished conditions. “But the school would have been a bright point.
” A historical marker stands where the original Howard School and subsequent Community Center once did, drawing children to learn and adults to gather. For teenagers it became the “Fun Teen” club for dancing, music and ping-pong. During Columbia’s segregated era, Howard Community Center and Park — with its Negro Little League team — fulfilled social and athletic needs.
And this is where our heroine enters the picture. Harriet Bell Waiters, born in 1904, grew up on Gadsden Street. She was a neighborhood girl who attended Howard School and then Booker T.
Washington High, Columbia’s first and widely acclaimed public high school for Blacks, which opened in 1916. After graduating in 1922, Waiters earned a degree from Benedict College and scored a job with the City of Columbia’s recreation department. She worked in the city’s Black rec centers, including Howard Community Center.
The photo of the Daughter Elks Dance was hers. Did she take it? Was it her camera? That’s a mystery. But what isn’t is that she held on to the photo for 50 years, until her death in 1993.
About 20 years later, Waiters’ collection of black-and-white photos arrived at Richland Library. "A Good Samaritan found them on the side of the road,” Dunlap said. Sometimes, “side of the road” can mean after someone’s home has been cleaned after they died.
Regardless, the simplest of photos can yield complex and unexpected lessons. From “Miss Hattie’s,” we can learn about Columbia’s Elks Club , a group of successful Black businessmen who raised money for community betterment and scholarships. A photo from the personal collection of Harriet Bell Waiters, three teenagers at the Howard Fun Teen center in downtown Columbia, approximately 1950.
"Mr. T Green" is written on the back. (Harriet Bell Waiters collection at the Walker Local and Family History Center at Richland Library.
) Dunlap, who spends her days in the library’s photo archives, knows they were a Black community organization that raised funds for children in need of food at Christmas, supported Black servicemen in Columbia and sponsored declamation contests for students who could win prizes for academic success. In this photo, it’s likely some of the Elks and their “Daughters” — really their wives in the auxiliary group that sponsored the dance — had been students in the building where they now were socializing as adults. The Howard Community Center may have been in decent shape then.
But 23 years later, the Columbia Record would report that the Seaboard Park Area — all 54 city blocks of it — had been deemed “the worst neighborhood for living conditions in the city” by Columbia’s planning department. The neighborhood, like other minority neighborhoods in the city, was razed. Residents may have moved to new public housing complexes, Dunlap theorized.
Allen-Benedict Court and Saxon Homes had indoor plumbing and other conveniences many Seaboard people hadn’t, but not the small mom-and-pop groceries, pool halls and bars attached to homes. “There was a loss of community vibrancy,” she said. 1950.
Date is approximate. Black and white photograph from the personal collection of Columbia Parks employee Harriet Bell Waiters. (Harriet Bell Waiters Collection at the Walker Local and Family History Center at Richland Library.
) In 1973, Howard Community Center, then known as the Fun Teen Park and School, was deactivated from the city park system and eventually demolished. The city’s urban renewal efforts had removed the people from the area and the other parks were now integrated. What was once a vibrant community had become only a memory.
Its historical marker faces Hampton Street and the back of the Columbia Police Department, which fronts Lincoln Street. During its school days, the county and city jails were in operation, jointly and separately depending on the era. The marker stands on top of a slope of the parking lot of the South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce.
On a weekday at noon, things are quiet, despite Hampton Street’s three lanes leading drivers into Columbia. Walk on that sidewalk with Dunlap, and you’ll see her education and experience as an archaeologist emerge. She bent to find bits of scrap metal and ceramics from the early 20th century.
One piece, she could tell by its design, is from the Art Deco era. She always returns pieces to the ground. That’s the professional thing to do.
Plus, she added, “there’s hardly a trace of the neighborhood left.” But. There is this photo, safe in the archives of Richland Library .
It’s tangible proof that the Howard Community Center existed. And that inside its doors on the evening of May 27, 1943, a lot of people were having a very good time..
