The Mann-Simons site will celebrate its Grand Re-Opening at the Jubilee Festival this September! Students will have the opportunity to explore the newly re-interpreted site and to learn how a middle-class African American family lived in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Originally purchased by former slaves Ben Delane and Celia Mann in c.1843, the Mann-Simons site served as the location of a lunch counter, a grocery store, and a family residence, and remained in the family until taken over by eminent domain in the 1960s. 

The Mann-Simons Site has been closed to the public for a little over a year to allow Historic Columbia to reinterpret the history of the many generations that lived and worked there, so we will be one of the first groups to experience the exciting new exhibits and hands-on activities that the site has to offer!