The Ernest A. Finney, Jr. Cultural Arts Center is a 501c3 organization located at 1510 Laurens Street, Columbia, South Carolina, (formerly the Southern Electric building) that officially opened in the summer of 2022. This new center is home to African American culture, art, and expression. It is also a long-awaited gathering place for community conversations. The new center is in the historic Robert Mills district and just across from the historic Waverly Community, and a stone’s throw from the one-hundred-year-old railroad tracks that have long defined small-town southern life in America.
The focus of this Cultural Arts Center is on the making of art, the keeping of community, living Black history, and the ongoing generational celebration of music, visual art, poetry, dance, theatre, the culinary arts, and other community-building and life-sustaining activities.