 Well good afternoon everyone my name is Henry Simons and I'm the assistant city manager of operations of course for the city of Columbia and we would like to welcome you and thank you for your presence on today. We picked a great afternoon with just the right weather to make this happen so we appreciate you all joining us for this historical historical moment. We want to thank our mayor, Dane Rickerman, Councilwoman Tina Herbert who represents District 2. We also have Councilman Tyler Bailey with us this morning as well. I also want to acknowledge our city manager Teresa Wilson for all of our continued leadership and guidance for our Parks and Recreation Department. Today is a great day for the city of Columbia and the Parks and Recreation Department. I am personally grateful to our mayor and our city council for their desire to consistently acknowledge African American history, heritage, and culture. Acknowledging our past and reminding this current generation of what this means to the fabric of the city of Columbia. I see former councilman Sam Davis with us on today. Thank you so much former councilman for being with us this morning. He was actually intimately involved in the process of acknowledging this as well so we appreciate him being here on today. Thank you to our Parks and Recreation staff. If our Parks and Recreation staff is here please raise your hand. Please thank them as well for their ongoing appreciation of the historic and cultural value of Lincoln Park and for wanting to share the knowledge with our citizens. We're grateful. We're grateful for them. Now this time we're going to ask Councilwoman Tina Herbert to come forth and provide some remarks. She'll be followed by Dr. Bobby Donaldson who is the associate professor of history and a director of the Center for Civil Rights and Research at the University of South Carolina. So please help me welcome Councilwoman Tina Herbert. Thank you Mr. Simons and thank you all for coming out today. This is this is a special moment. Thank you to our mayor. Great to see former councilman Mr. Davis. We wouldn't be here but for his efforts earlier and then our new if y'all making sure everyone gets to meet our new council person Mr. Tyler Bailey. At the turn of the 20th century African-Americans here in the city of Columbia were excluded from most parks and recreational places and theaters. This park Lincoln Park is the testimony of those same African American citizens who were determined to have their own place so that they could also have recreation and so that they could have fun and unity but also feel welcomed and also feel included. 4,000 people gathered here on the opening day in July of 1901. A little bit more than what we have here today. After opening African-American citizens across the city would gather here for waltz and picnics in the wooded areas. They would look for relief from the summer heat at its pool and Lincoln Park also featured regular entertainment on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays in front of packed audiences in the theater that they had here in the auditorium. We are grateful for this green space and how it now commemorates and celebrates the unbreakable spirit and sense of communion that brought so many Columbia citizens together 125 years ago. This historic marker now commemorates and celebrates them and it's a constant reminder for us as we go forward. So I definitely want to thank the parks and rec staff and city manager Wilson and I am going to now get the real historian to come up and ask Dr. Donaldson to come up. Thank you very much councilwoman Herbert. Good afternoon everyone. To the mayor, to our mayor Rickerman, to our city manager, to assistant city manager Henry Simons, thank you for the assignment to be here today and especially to former councilman Sam Davis who set the stage for today's important unveiling. I serve as the executive director of the Center for Civil Rights History and Research and also as one of the founding members of Columbia SC 63, Our Story Matters, which is a city initiative, a collaboration with Historic Columbia, Experienced Columbia, and the University of South Carolina. Councilman Davis will remember over 10 years ago this organization was established with the intent of working for one year to document the history of civil rights and African American life and culture in Columbia. We're still at it and we're still at it because of days like today where we're reminded of how much there is to uncover on just yesterday, an extremely busy day in the city of Columbia celebrating African American history. I had the good fortune of being with mayor Rickerman downtown at the Columbia Museum of Art. There at the Columbia Museum of Art is an exhibit called Intersection and this exhibit tells the story of the vibrant life and culture of African Americans on Washington Street in the early part of the 20th century. It also tells the story of African Americans who sought to challenge segregation and injustice on Main Street and then it speaks about those of us who came thereafter, who benefited, who built upon this history. And the mayor and I were fortunate yesterday to be in this gallery where several people after seeing images approached us to share their experiences, their memories. We did not record it but it happened all the time and I am reminded in that experience that we witnessed yesterday that so much of our history is not what I've written. So much of our history is not what is in the archives. So much of our history is in the minds and the memories of those who lived it. And there is, it seems to me, an important need now to record and to document that history. Today is a continued reminder that the footprint and the impact of African Americans are wide and deep across Colombia, even in places that have been overlooked, covered up, torn down or redeveloped. This ceremony and this historical marker are reminders to all of us that there is always more to know, more to uncover, more to research and archive, and there's always more to tell and to teach. And I must confess that the narrative that Councilwoman Herbert just mentioned, this part and its history were all together new to me until just a few weeks ago. You knew it before me. I did not know about the part. No one had ever mentioned this part. This space in this marker are reminders to us. They're reminders to us that our faith and our history, they're the substance of things hoped for. Our faith and our history are the evidence of things not always seen. So here we are today in this wooded park, which in 1901, as Councilwoman Herbert mentioned, was described as the following. A park near Hyatt, exclusively for colored people. A separate park for Negroes. A new park for colored people. She mentioned the moment. 4,000 people who looked like us, including the Hoos who are Black Columbia, came here in 1901 to celebrate a place of gatherings and speeches, picnics, musicals, swimming barbecues, a place where segregated train brought people from Main Street to the highlands of Eau Claire to this park, where another train brought white citizens to Hyatt Park 1901. By 1903, this park called the Colored People's Resort seemingly disappeared. Hope's dash, vision shattered, dreams deferred. This park, by 1905, houses that were built on the periphery. This is what the state newspaper and the Charleston News and Courier said in 1905, no lots around this former park should be sold to persons of African descent. Hope's dash, dreams deferred. But today, we come to tell a different story. We come to reconstruct a history long loss. Today we come where 4,000 stood to do our part to get this history right, to do our part to write a vision on a tablet, on a marker so that those who come thereafter might be encouraged, educated, edified, and inspired to run on to see what their end shall be. The Old Testament prophet said, for the vision is yet for an appointed time. But at the end, it shall speak and not lie. Though history may tarry, wait for it because it will surely come. It will not tarry. Today we do not wait for the history of Lincoln Park. That history is with us right now. Thank you. I'm so glad I'll have to follow behind Dr. Donaldson today. Only thing I have to do is acknowledge a few folks, but thank you again, Dr. Donaldson, for your passion to African American culture and history. So we want to quickly acknowledge, of course, again, our mayor, all of our city council members that were supporting this effort. Again, former councilman Sam Davis, we want to again acknowledge him. Again, thank you to Dr. Donaldson for your remarks and your presence here today. We want to acknowledge our city of Columbia Parks and Recreation Department that's with us again on today, led by our director, Randy Davis. Randy, raise your hand. Randy Davis is there. Thank you, Randy. We also want to acknowledge Mr. Vita Glover that's with us as well. Thank you so much for being here, Ms. Glover. I also want to acknowledge Dr. Edwin Breeden, who is the coordinator for the South Carolina Historical Marker Program, who is with the South Carolina Department of Archives and History. He is not here, but we leaned on him for this information, so I want to publicly acknowledge his efforts and support for this as well. And again, thank you all to our citizens of this community. You all are the fabric of today's community, so your presence means a lot to us today. So thank you so much for being here with us as we celebrate.