Celebrate Jubilee: Festival of Heritage Saturday, August 25
Contributed by Historic Columbia Foundation

The Nia Company will perform at Jubilee: Festival of Heritage.

Celebrate the life and legacy of Celia Mann, one of South Carolina's most celebrated free black women as Historic Columbia Foundation hosts its award- winning Jubilee: Festival of Heritage on Saturday, August 25, from 10 am- 6 pm at the Mann- Simons Cottage, 1403 Richland Street.

This year's event will feature tours, artists' demonstrations, hands- on educational activities for children, and musical performances from the Gene Dykes Big Band, Mystic Vibrations, and Blues legend Drink Small.

Each year Jubilee strives to promote cultural heritage through education, specifically highlighting local individuals who have made significant contributions to South Carolina. This year, Jubilee will honor Judge Matthew Perry, who helped transform South Carolina from its segregated Jim Crow era. During his career as an attorney, Perry devoted most of his time to civil rights work. He was the first African American from the Deep South to be nominated to a federal bench and later nominated as United States District Judge for the District of South Carolina.

Jubilee also will feature Dr. Andrew Billingsley, author and sociologist. Billingsley will sign his latest

work, Yearning to Breathe

Free: Robert Smalls of South

Carolina and His Families.

The biography is the story of a slave turned civil war hero and statesman, told from a sociological perspective.

To honor members of the nation's military, Jubilee will feature educational presentations from the second U.S. Colored Light Artillery and the Tuskegee Airmen. The Jubilee Film Series will

present The Marines of

Montford Point: Fighting for

Freedom on Thursday, August 23, from 7- 9 pm at the historic Big Apple, 1000 Hampton Street. The documentary, narrated by Academy Award Winner Louis Gossett Jr., examines the experiences of the nation's first African-American Marines to serve in the United States Marine Corps. A panel discussion will follow. Tickets for the film screening are $5 for Historic Columbia members and $7 for non- members.

For a schedule of festival activities, sponsorship or vendor opportunities, please call 252-7742, ext. 25 or visit www.historiccolumbia.org.

The Mann- Simons Cottage has statewide significance as one of only a few houses in South Carolina once owned by free blacks in antebellum days and now preserved as historic house museums. Celia Mann, an enslaved Charlestonian midwife, gained her freedom, walked to Columbia and acquired this circa- 1850 cottage before the Civil War. Her descendants occupied the home for more than 100 years until it was restored as a house museum in the 1970s. The collections in the cottage reflect the entrepreneurial spirit of free blacks. An exhibition presents information on Celia Mann and her descendents, the restoration of the cottage, and the archaeological excavation at the site.