Column: Heritage festival brings feelings of home

In 1883, Lucy Craft Laney, an educator from Macon, Ga. founded the Haines Institute for Industrial and Normal Education in Augusta. The school would later become Lucy Craft Laney High School.

In 1885, the Rev. C. T. Walker, born in slavery, founded the Tabernacle Baptist Church on Ellis Street. The church still stands though now on the street named for him and Laney – Laney-Walker Boulevard.

The Laney-Walker and Bethlehem districts wear their rich histories on their proverbial sleeves. The neighborhoods were African American, born from Jim Crow zoning policies, named after local figures, Laney and Walker, whose lives represent an affront to, an overcoming of, that same kind of subjugation.

I happen to live around these parts, but I didn’t always. I grew up across the river in Aiken, and just as much in my parents’ hometown of Johnston, S.C. I’ve spent most of my adult life in the Augusta area, but I’ve only recently become aware of the history of Augusta’s predominantly African American neighborhoods. This weekend, I feel like I got a proper introduction, or induction, to the community I currently call home.

There are certain ways in which the Laney Walker Bethlehem Festival on Saturday was like other festivals. Plenty of people, tents sheltering vendors, food trucks. I got a plate of beef brisket with green beans from J.H. Moore BBQ that I enjoyed very much. I got a free bag of sweet potatoes courtesy of Garnett Johnson for Mayor.

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Okay, that’s not something you see at every festival but it seemed to fit, and I’m not going to object to free sweet potatoes.

The things about it that I found different could be either a testament to my own incorrigible introversion or just an overzealous embracing of my new neighborhood. There was a point where Shanna Carkhum, development manager for the housing department and one of the key coordinators of the event, took the stage to announce the winners of a raffle for free turkeys (I didn’t win). I was reminded of what she had called this event earlier. She had called it a “homecoming.”

I kept note of my feelings, always deeply reserved, as I wandered about Dyess Park and people-watched. I saw children playing along the inflatables, laughing and gasping in tiny awe at the ducks, turkeys, pigs and goats at the petting zoo. I watched the crowds swell up, in both size and sound, when the Laney High School drumline marched with as much style as with precision before the stage. They were followed by a dance performance of the Royal Dynamic Marching Unit, bringing fervor and finesse.

Leah Savant & Major Sound performed on stage, with Savant praising her bandmates (among them Kigwana Cherry) and stirring up the crowd with impassioned vocals, doing covers of songs I grew up with: “Don’t Walk Away” by Jade, “I Would Die 4 U,” by Prince, “Formation” by Beyonce (okay, that last one was too recent for me to have “grown up” with it, but it has a similar spot on my Spotify list).

I saw onlookers with their phones out, singing along, cheering, doing the Electric Slide. I felt like I was at a family reunion in Johnston, even though I hardly knew anybody. I sat down and soaked up the joy by osmosis, resisted the urge to move to the music long enough to take notes.

As soon as I heard Savant announce her next song would be “the Cookout Song,” I looked back up, my curiosity piqued. What was the cookout song? There were candidates I could think of, like “Cupid Shuffle” or “Cha-Cha Slide.” Some songs I was thinking of had already been blaring from the DJ’s speakers, like “You Dropped A Bomb on Me” by the Gap Band.

Major Sound proceeded to perform “Before I Let Go” by Frankie Beverly and Maze. Yeah, that’s the cookout song, all right. It was all too apt. It hit me near the end, as the tends were lowering and the stage grew empty, I knew what that feeling was that was just a little different: this felt like home.

Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter with The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.