36 hours in Columbus … if you want to discover the varied, rich, black heritage

In 1860, 37 percent of the city’s 10,000 population was black – all but 100 of them slaves. Today, blacks are 45 percent of the city’s 187,000 population and play significant roles across society – in government, medicine, education, business and the arts. The 187-year history of blacks in Columbus is both varied and rich, with points of sadness and triumph.

Here are 13 black-heritage things to see and do if you have 36 hours in Columbus.

#1 – Black history museum a good place to start

The Columbus Black History Museum and Archives, 315 8th Street, is in transition. Until late 2015, the museum and archives wasn’t as much a place to view displays as it was an occasion to meet and talk with director Johnnie Warner. There are displays, of course, crammed into a restored shotgun house of 750 square feet. But it was Warner who was the center of attention, who can reach into his archive of 3,500 documents to answer questions about black history from slavery to today. Warner settled in Columbus in 1992, after a career in the U.S. Army. Black history, he found, was “too spread out,” thus his impetus for the museum and archive. “Come and talk with me,” was his invitation to individuals and groups. Warner resigned in December 2015, he said, because the money wasn’t enough to support his family. David Gillaem is the new director. Suggested donation, $5.

Get maps and directions: The Columbus Black History Museum and Archives

#2 – Meet the “Mother of the Blues” at Ma Rainey’s retirement home

Ma Rainey, the “Mother of the Blues,” is celebrated in a museum housed in her retirement home, 805 5th Avenue. The house was acquired by the city from a niece, restored, and turned into a museum of Rainey’s life as “one of the last great minstrel artists and one of the first professional women blues singers,” as writer Sandra Lieb concludes in an authoritative biography. Museum guide Deb Wise offers tours for school children, college students and adults. (Be sure to ask her to tell you the story about Ma Rainey’s bed.) On display are artifacts and reproductions from Rainey’s brief, but influential, career. Wall displays by historian and preservationist Fred Fussell also tell the story of blues music from slavery to the 20th century, in this region and across the U.S. Free admission.

Get maps and directions: Ma Rainey Museum

#3 – Segregation-era library is today committed to family literacy

The city built what was called the 4th Avenue Library in 1953. It was a segregation-era public library for blacks. In 1981, the now-integrated library was renamed the Mildred L. Terry Branch Library for its first director, who retired in 1980. The original building was torn down in 2009, replaced by a $4.7 million building that is four times the size. Visit the new library at 640 Veterans Parkway to meet its head librarian, Silvia Bunn, a New York Times Librarian of the Year. Ask her or the staff about the library’s commitment to family literacy. Also note six paintings by the late Thomas Jefferson Flanagan, one of the country’s most important folk artists. Note, too, the pair of stone, crescent-shaped, benches in the garden. They were on the front of the original building.

Get maps and directions: Mildred L Terry Branch Library

#4 – Renovations under way at home of advocate for public-school education of blacks

William H. Spencer was an early and important advocate for the public-school education of black children. Spencer was named principal of the first public school for blacks, Claflin School, in 1880. (Fire destroyed the school; the current building was erected in 1958.) Later, he supervised all four public schools for blacks. Spencer insisted that the city build a high school for blacks. The city resisted. Spencer died in 1925, five years before the opening the first high school for blacks in 1930. The school was named for Spencer. Today, Spencer’s Neo-classical home at 745 Veterans Parkway is undergoing renovation by a Spencer High School alumni group. Tours are available by appointment. Call Ann Davis at 706 577 7280.

Get maps and directions: William H. Spencer House

#5 – Porterdale Cemetery is the “narrative” of black history in Columbus

Porterdale Cemetery, says Black History Museum former director Johnnie Warner, “is the narrative of black history in Columbus.” It is the place where blacks were buried in this segregation-era, city-owned cemetery. Among hundreds of graves are nine that are described, marked and mapped for visitors at the cemetery foundation’s website. (Download and take with you.) Among them are: Primus King, a pastor whose 1944 suit gave all citizens the right – if not always the actuality – to register and vote – two decades before the Voting Rights Act. Fredye Marshall, an early star of television drama and musical theater. Alphonso Biggs, a chef who catered meals for five Fort Benning generals and three U.S. presidents – Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower. Also: Lizzie Mae Lunsford, a wealthy businesswoman whose philanthropy quietly served many, including black soldiers during World War II; the black-education leader William H. Spencer and Ma Rainey, the “Mother of the Blues.” The descriptions often prompt visitors to learn more. As an example, Elizabeth Canty, at Signpost #2, is honored for work as an educator. The fuller story? Her father, Winter Canty, a slave owned by Brigadier General James Cantey, refused the general’s offer of freedom, and later defended the general’s wife and valuables from Union troops who entered the city after the Battle for Columbus. “They put a rope around his neck and drew him up to the nearest limb,” a nephew wrote in an online family memoir, but Canty refused to tell them where the valuables were kept. Twice more the noose tightened. “Although he was weak in body,” the nephew wrote, “his brave spirit was undaunted and still he answered them not a word.” Canty survived the assault and went on to own a small farm, treat animals and see his daughters graduate from college and become teachers. His grave in Porterdale is two stone markers from daughter Elizabeth’s. So, think of a visit to Porterdale as an entry point into the lives of these early, important, black people.

One marker not on the foundation’s tour is noteworthy. The 1903 Bragg Smith marker honors a black man who died in “the heroic but fruitless” attempt to save a white city engineer trapped when an excavation caved in around him. Writer Judith Grant speculates that “Columbus is the only city in the Southeast to have erected a monument to a black man at that time in history.” The city also named a street for Smith – Bragg Smith Street – off Cusseta Road in south Columbus.

Get maps and directions: Porterdale Cemetery

#6 – Grassy median in downtown Columbus is best-known site of mob violence toward blacks

Mob violence, mostly whites directed at blacks, was an issue in Columbus at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. The best-known site is the grassy median on Broadway, between 11th and 10th streets. On June 1, 1896, a white mob dragged Jesse Slayton from a courtroom, shot and hung him from a tree. Later the same day, the same mob took William Miles from the jail and hung him from the tree. Both black men were accused of raping white women. A placard was pinned to their bodies, according to the Enquirer-Sun: “All cases of this kind shall be treated likewise.” Deputies arrested 10 of the mobsters, but the grand jury refused to indict them. A poster-size photo of Slayton and Miles hanging from the tree is exhibited at the Columbus Black History Museum and Archive. Researchers from the University of Georgia and University of Washington verified four deaths from mob violence in Columbus between 1896 and 1921. A fifth occurred across the river in Alabama committed by a Columbus mob.

Get maps and directions: Broadway between 11th and 10th streets, Columbus Black History Museum and Archive

#7 – A “Slavery Tour” with an uplifting note at the end

The “Slavery Tour” is an essential, if ugly, element of black history in Columbus. Slaves accounted for 37 percent of the city’s population in 1860, according to the Federal census. Local tax records valued 3,265 slaves at $4.2 million. No asset in the city, public or private, was worth more. Start at the Walker-Peters-Langdon house at 716 Broadway. Its slavery interest is an outbuilding behind the house – a cabin moved to this site by historic preservationists. As many as 15 slaves would have lived in this 340-square-foot cabin, sleeping in its loft. Today, the house is owned by Historic Columbus Foundation. Tours of the house, outbuildings and grounds by appointment, $5. Self-tours of the grounds are free. Note the brick pavers on Broadway between 8th and 4th streets, said to be layed by slaves. Then wander the downtown where three auction houses sold slaves. According to the 1859-1860 city directory, one was at the northwest corner of Broadway and 12th Street. Another was a few doors north. A third, the A.K. Ayers Auction House, was on Broadway between 10th and 11th streets. Ayers lived in the downtown at the southwest corner of 3rd Avenue and 11th Street. He erected a brick pen, the walls topped with broken glass, to house slaves awaiting auction, according to historian Nancy Telfair. The house and pen are gone, but one of the iron grates that served as a window is on display at the Columbus Museum. The slave trader Allen C. McGeehee lived at 1534 2nd Avenue. The house is preserved though not open to the public. Telfair links McGeehee to the slave ship Wanderer, whose 1859 voyage to West Africa was said to be the last successful – and then illegal – importation of slaves to America. End this tour on an up note: Visit the Resting Garden on 6th Avenue. The garden sits on the “Old Cemetery for Colored Persons,” established in 1828 at the city’s founding. Slaves and free blacks were buried here in unmarked graves. Today, visitors wind around the fenced grounds on a landscaped trail, reading the interpretive plaques, resting on the benches – a contemplative experience that is part of the city’s restoration of the 6th Avenue corridor.

Get maps and directions: Walker-Peters-Langdon House, Columbus Museum, Resting Garden

#8 – View a classic work by painter Alma Thomas

Painter Alma Thomas, born in Columbus in 1891, was the first black woman to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. The painter’s “Air View of a Spring Nursery,” a large acrylic on canvas that she painted in 1966, is displayed in the permanent collection of the Columbus Museum. A detail of the painting is the cover image of the book, Building on a Legacy, by William W. Winn, on sale in the museum’s store.

Get maps and directions: Columbus Museum

#9 – Columbus Times, its pioneering publisher, emphasize positive aspects of black life

The Columbus Times weekly newspaper may be best known for its long-time owner and publisher, Ophelia DeVore Mitchell, who died in 2014. Mitchell gained control of the paper in the early 1970s after her marriage to its founder, Vernon Mitchell. She is remembered in obituaries – including in the New York Times – as a model, agent, charm-school director and as a publisher who set “trends in the reporting of positive news about African-Americans.” She founded a national advertising agency focusing on black-owned newspapers and led a national association of black-owned newspaper publishers. More recently the newspaper was run by her daughter Carol, and now by her granddaughter, Petra. For a more radical view of black life in America, pick up a copy of The Final Call, the weekly newspaper published by the Nation of Islam. Members of the Muhammad Mosque #96 hawk the newspaper on weekends to motorists at the intersection of Buena Vista and Andrews roads.

Get maps and directions: Columbus Times, Buena Vista and Andrews roads

#10 – Segregation-era Liberty Theatre remains a community-oriented cultural center

The Liberty Theatre, 821 8th Avenue, was a cultural center for blacks during the segregation era. The theater opened in 1925 and for 50 years attracted the country’s most-important black performers: Marian Anderson, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Lena Horne, among many others. The Liberty declined with the end of segregation and closed in 1974. Restoration began 20 years later and the Liberty re-opened to a different role in 1996. Today, it’s a community-oriented cultural center that presents musical and theatrical performances, talent competitions, and is a training center for children and adults aligned with the public schools and Columbus State University. Check out the Liberty’s Facebook page to see what’s on during a visit.

Get maps and directions: The Liberty Theatre

#11 – Historically black churches important for role in war, architecture, music

Historically black churches have been important since the time of the Civil War. Remnants of one hospital – the Caines Convalescent Camp – are in the basement of the Greater Shady Grove Baptist Church, 1901 Second Avenue, according to Judith Grant. Church lore has it that its black congregants sang to and comforted patients. After the war, according to church history, congregants sought and received permission to use the building for indoor worship, later building its church on the same site. Tours available by appointment. The 1886 tower and turrets of St. James AME Church, 1002 6th Avenue, have been called the finest example of Victorian Gothic Revival in Columbus, according to Clason Kyle. Its doors are said to have been carved by slaves. Tours by appointment. Friendship Baptist Church, 831 6th Avenue, is where Ma Rainey attended services and sang in the choir after she retired and returned to Columbus.

Get maps and directions: Greater Shady Grove Baptist Church, St. James AME Church, Friendship Baptist Church

#12 – Carver Heights ranch houses a reminder of visionary developer for black professionals

Stand at the corner of Carver Street and 32nd Avenue and you are in the heart of Carver Heights, the first subdivision built for middle-class blacks. The realtor E.E. Farley planned and marketed the development. “The hills of the new suburb quickly filled with 50s-era ranch houses occupied by professionals,” according to a Midtown description. Today, a centerpiece of the neighborhood is Carver High School, a state-of-the-art science, technology, engineering and math magnet school, opened in 2012. Farley died in 1956, before the subdivision was completed. One of the city’s public housing projects is named for him.

Get maps and directions: Carver Heights

#13 – John Godwin’s grave is one part of Horace King’s remarkable legacy

Horace King’s remarkable legacy remains in sight in Columbus and Phenix City. Born a slave in 1807, King was later sold to contractor John Godwin. Godwin and King built the City Bridge spanning the Chattahoochee River between Georgia and Alabama that was destroyed in the Battle for Columbus. King superintended construction of City Mills that stands derelict along the river, awaiting restoration. King supplied the timber and pegs for the hull of the USS Jackson, on display in the National Civil War Naval Museum. King – later freed and successful in business and politics – designed the memorial atop Godwin’s grave at 18th Avenue and 13th Place in Phenix City. It reads: “This stone was placed here by Horace King in last remembrance of the love and gratitude he felt for his lost friend and former master.”