Columbia Culture

Columbia’s culture is shaped by government, the university and an unfinished argument about the past.

The State House grounds

The lawn functions as a public argument in bronze and stone. Confederate monuments from the nineteenth century stand alongside the African American History Monument, dedicated in 2001 — a curved granite wall with twelve relief panels running from the Middle Passage to the present, the first monument of its kind on any state capitol grounds in the United States. A statue of Strom Thurmond stands nearby, its inscription altered after his Black daughter came forward. Reading the grounds as a whole is the most instructive thing a visitor can do here.

The university

Founded in 1801, with an antebellum Horseshoe built substantially by enslaved labour, which the university now acknowledges with a memorial and a research project.

Music and art

The Columbia Museum of Art, the Nickelodeon independent cinema and a live music scene around Five Points and the Vista.

Theatre and the fair

Town Theatre, founded in 1919, claims to be among the oldest community theatres in continuous operation in the country, and the state fair each October is a long-standing civic fixture rather than a commercial import.

Food

South Carolina is the only state with four distinct regional barbecue sauces, and the midlands around Columbia are the heartland of the mustard-based one — yellow, tangy and attributed to the German settlers of the eighteenth century. Whole hog is the traditional cut, cooked overnight, and the older places still serve it buffet-style with hash over rice.