Saturday, with Thanksgiving approaching, Augusta will be bringing in the holiday season by commemorating its past in order to look to its future.
Garden City Jazz and the City of Augusta have partnered up to organize the Laney Walker Bethlehem Heritage Festival, an event honoring the history of the Laney Walker and Bethlehem neighborhoods.
The festival, held at Dyess Park, will have food trucks and local vendors, and will feature performances by local artists, dancing groups and the Lucy Craft Laney High School drumline. Alongside the amenities already at the park, there will also inflatables and even a petting zoo.
“It’s a fun-filled family event,” said Shanna Carkhum, development manager for Augusta-Richmond County Housing and Development.
The festival represents not only a preservation of Augusta history but showcases its progress. The Housing and Development Department is in the midst of several affordable housing development projects, including the Laney Walker/Bethlehem Revitalization Project. This includes the construction of new homes on McQueen Court, off Twiggs Street, and the reconstruction of the home of Dr. Scipio S. Johnson with a duplex for two families. Dr. Johnson was a pharmacist and physician who served the African American community.
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The process of renewing the area inspired an urge to maintain its memory. The festival is but one endeavor to honor that responsibility, alongside the second phase of the Golden Blocks public art project. While Golden Blocks is a celebration of historic Augusta through art, the Heritage Festival aims to do so actively with the community in what Carkhum calls a kind of homecoming.
“We said, ‘Hey, why not take it a step further,’” said Carkhum about what led to the housing department’s partnership with Garden City Jazz. “People who are actually in the community and the rest of the CSRA could just come out to celebrate the history of the past and also see what we’re doing now to revitalize the area.”
The festivities will also include a ceremony in which Commissioners Jordan Johnson and Francine Scott will speak, and Corey Rogers, historian at the Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History, will give a presentation about the history of the area.
The partners aim to make the Laney Walker Bethlehem Heritage Festival an annual event. Carkhum says that a date close to Thanksgiving was chosen so that locals could have something to do as family comes to visit, and that it could become a kind of fall festival. She also notes that such a celebration is needed in the neighborhood.
“This is the urban core,” said Carkhum. “Most of our festivals do take place in the Commons, which is nice, but we can have that same kind of environment within the Laney-Walker Bethlehem area.”
For more information about the Laney Walker Bethlehem Heritage Festival, visit its Facebook events page at https://www.facebook.com/events/870023883702061.
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter with The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
