Verna Laboy has been re-enacting Annie Fisher for the past 25 years to keep her presence alive in Columbia history.
After a ceremony Tuesday, Fisher’s home on the corner of Seventh Street and Park Avenue will be permanently remembered.
“Annie belongs to all of us,” Laboy said. “And it’s a story, a true story, a story that we own of resilience and being able to overcome against the odds.”
The Sharp End Heritage Committee dedicated two markers along the African American Heritage Trail on Tuesday. Along with Fisher’s marker, another was dedicated at the entrance to Douglass Park to commemorate the Douglass Pool and the original Russell Chapel.
These are the fourth and fifth markers the committee plans to dedicate over the next year — with 12 to 14 more in the works — in an attempt to remember African-American history in Columbia.
Douglass Park and Russell Chapel
Addressing a crowd of more than 30 people, First Ward City Councilman Clyde Ruffin said standing in Douglass Park reminded him of the bulldozers that removed the monuments and testimonies of African-American “achievement and light and love and liberty and challenges and what the previous generations had to overcome as they battled discrimination and segregation and all of the other things that came to keep them limited and confined.”
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