The Southern Black Girls and Women’s Consortium brings its nine-city Southern tour to the Midlands.
Southern Black Girls and Women’s Consortium’s Joy & Justice Tour touches down in Columbia, South Carolina, on Saturday, September 26, with a free, family-friendly, festival-style community event at the Earlewood Park Community Center. Since launching in June, the nine-city, eight-state Joy & Justice Tour has created spaces where Black girls and women can connect, celebrate, access resources and experience joy, unapologetically. Columbia is the tour’s eighth stop, one day before its final stop in Charlotte, NC.
Saturday, September 26, 2026
• 11:00 a.m. – Joy & Justice Tour Columbia
• 8:00 a.m. – Joy & Justice Walk with GirlTrek – Earlewood Park Community Center, 1113 Recreation Dr, Columbia, SC 29203
Black girls and women are navigating real challenges, but Southern Black Girls believe we cannot build the future by focusing only on what we are up against. We have to make room for joy, too. As Executive Director Chanceé Lundy has said, joy is not a luxury; it is strategy, and right now, it is how we protect each other. Joy without justice is temporary. Justice without joy is unsustainable. The Columbia stop brings that declaration to South Carolina, where Black girls and women have long carried the state’s civic and cultural life while being left out of its funding and its headlines.
That’s the heart of the Joy & Justice Tour: bringing solutions, resources and celebration directly into Southern communities. Each stop features nine activation zones designed to uplift, inform and celebrate Black girls and women in their fullness, including Arts & Culture, Beauty, Economic Empowerment, Health & Wellness, STEM, Advocacy & Justice, Sports, Nutrition, and Education & HBCUs.
Attendees can also expect music, food trucks, community resources and a Dove-sponsored photo booth experience, because joy should be something you can experience, not just talk about.
Since 2017, Southern Black Girls has invested more than $11.4 million in 250+ organizations and awarded 1,000+ #BlackGirlJoyChallenge grants. Through its partnership with Megan Thee Stallion’s Pete & Thomas Foundation, the organization is also helping fund the next generation of young Black changemakers across the South. Some of our recent, local grantee partners include:
• EveryBlackGirl, Inc. (Columbia), grassroots advocacy, leadership programming, and crisis response working to end the push-out and criminalization of Black girls in schools
• Scrub Life Cares (Columbia), expanding access to menstrual health resources and reproductive health education in Title I schools
• The reLeaf Collective (Columbia and Lexington), a 31-acre woodland retreat and agribusiness incubator connecting community, land, and wellness
• The Joyous Womb (Saint Helena Island), reproductive and birth support rooted in Gullah Geechee and Indigenous practices
Register for Columbia at www.southernblackgirls.org/joytour/columbia.html
Learn more about the Joy & Justice Tour at www.southernblackgirls.org/joytour/
For general tour inquiries, visit joytour@southernblackgirls.org