Africatown Heritage House holds first ever Culture Fest

MOBILE, Ala. ( WKRG ) — A taste of African culture was available to those attending the Africatown Heritage House’s inaugural Culture Fest, serving as a cultural celebration filled with spoken word, prayer, African artifacts, and face paint.

“The idea behind Culture Fest was to try and gather as many African town organizations as possible, as well as community organizations around Mobile that represent Black culture,” Jessica Fairley, the manager of the Africatown Heritage House, said.

Vendors were able to sell products from Africa to help achieve the goal of spreading and educating people about Black culture. William Cannon was selling African artifacts from Ghana, Nigeria, and other countries.

“This guy here, this guy here is a conga player from Ghana. Basically, this carving here represents the energy of the spiritual realm of the Congo player,” Cannon said while holding up the artifact. “They use that to speak and communicate with each other when they couldn’t when they were far away from each other, so this is a very important statue here to keep them memorization of the Congo, not only as as a musical tool, but a form of communication.”

Culture Fest also served as an educational experience to help kids like Jillian McNeill learn a big part of Mobile’s history.

“I didn’t know this, but I had learned today that the Clotilda was one of the last ships,” McNeill said. “And the slave that were brought here were illegally brought.”

Along with products, educational resources were made available to also help people learn about the cultural significance of Black hair.

“As we know or some of us know, it goes way, way, way back to when it was literally used to get us out of, you know?” Haircare vendor Tylana Wimberly said. “So it was freedom, essentially.”

People attending Culture Fest events like this help keep Black history alive.

“I think it’s important for us to keep creating genuine Black art, keep our culture alive just because other people take inspiration from it,” Keturah Priester, a visitor from Connecticut, said. “So I think it’s good to keep creating it, you know, where, you know, where it has its originality also.

“We need to know where we come from, then we know where we’re going,” Michelle Wilson from the Mobile Area Black Chamber of Commerce said. “If we don’t know our history, we don’t know who we are. And so that’s what Africatown is about. It’s about the history of Mobile, Alabama. It’s about the descendants here. So, and it’s about everybody’s learning because a lot of people in Mobile still don’t know.”

“History is living,” said Fairley. “History is not just in the books. History is all around.”

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