Aug 22, 2024 - At an open house for the Ernest A. Finney, Jr. Cultural Arts Center on Aug. 15, Nikky Finney, the inaugural director of the nonprofit and daughter of its namesake, welcomed dozens of Waverly residents, Columbia locals and those connected to the work of Finney and the team building the center. It was a chance to introduce to the center to the community, to explain its purpose and to ask for money — $2 million of it — as part of their Capital Campaign.
Mayor Daniel Rickenmann presented a $50,000 check from the city’s Hospitality Tax Fund to go toward building improvements, and Andy Cook with Founders Federal donated $100,000 on behalf of the credit union. An anonymous donor, Finney said, agreed to match those funds, plus an extra $100,000.
The money will go toward a new roof for the “longhouse,” the industrial area off the offices where they plan to build a stage, workshop and dance spaces, a gallery and an area for community gatherings. And the long, concrete-floored space needs air conditioning, too.
“I know when this center has everything in place — the stage, the theater, the jazz music, the dance floor, the art center — it will change our community,” Finney told a crowd tucked into the office’s small gathering space, with more stuffed into the hallway. “It will change how people see themselves.”
At the open house, the excitement from attendees — young and old, Black and White, already engaged and simply curious — was palpable. People who grew up in Columbia talked about the potential of the space, which used to house Southern Electric Company and sits along railroad tracks.
The idea for the Ernest A. Finney, Jr. Cultural Arts Center came as many big ideas in the South come about, over breakfast between two friends. Frances Close, a White woman from Fort Mill, and Kevin Gray, a Black man from Columbia, often met to discuss how to serve their communities. The idea of a cultural arts center came about, as did a barbecue restaurant. It took several years, but Gray and Close opened Railroad BBQ on Laurens Street in 2020. When the two learned Southern Electric Co. was closing, they knew the center was within reach.
They decided to name the center after Ernest A. Finney, Jr. , South Carolina’s first Black Supreme Court Justice since Reconstruction. Then they approached his daughter about running it.
“And that’s how I came into it,” Finney said, laughing. “I was minding my own business, writing poetry, teaching at the university and traveling around.”
But Finney had been feeling a call to honor her family’s legacy and to give back to her community for a while. “And I could hear my father, who left us in 2017, physically say to me, ‘Yeah, I think that’s a great idea.’”
Gray died in 2023, but Close and Finney plan to honor his legacy of Civil Rights Activism and community action once the space is fully renovated.
“Kevin pushed me,” Close said. “And he really had a wonderful vision.”
The center opened in 2022 by asking community members what they’d want to see the space become. From those early conversations came the ethos of the center: provide avenues to teach the arts, introduce Black youth to the history of the community in Columbia and foster hard conversations.
It’s all in an effort to uplift the Waverly community as a vital piece of Columbia’s lifeblood, Finney said. “Don’t look away from this side of town,” she said. “Look at this side of town and see the potential and the possibility.”
To learn more about the Finney Center, visit thefinneycenter.com.
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