Gastonia, Belmont to hold Juneteenth celebrations
Gastonia and Belmont are each having an event to commemorate Juneteenth, a federal holiday that commemorates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans.
Belmont
On Saturday, June 18, the Belmont Juneteenth Celebration will start at 2 p.m. at Stowe Park.
Delta Sanders of Elements of Empowerment, who organized the festival with the city of Belmont, said that Gastonia DJ Wavey B. Williams will be present, and there will be musical performances throughout the day.
"It will be a festival of music, art and culture," Sanders said. "We try to curate the vendors so that it's very much a display of cultural items."
It will be the festival's first time in the park since 2019. Last year and in 2020, Belmont held a parade to commemorate Juneteenth.
There will be artists, people with African apparel, vendors with jewelry and T-shirts.
Twisted Sugar, a custom soda shop in Belmont, will be offering a custom drink.
The festival's signature activities — the African drum circle, the tribal face painting, a henna tattoo artist, and tie-dye T-shirt stations — will be free.
At 7 p.m., there will be a concert. The Carl Ratliff Jazz Quartet will perform.
"We are really looking forward to it. Like I said, it's been since 2019 that we were in the park, so we're very excited," Sanders said.
This year will be the 11th year that Belmont has held a Juneteenth celebration.
Gastonia
In Gastonia, the downtown festival, Gastonia EbonyFest, will be kicked off with a basketball tournament at the Erwin Center on North Pryor Street, starting at noon on June 18.
The festival itself will start with a parade at 4 p.m. on Sunday, June 19, said Tasha White, the festival organizer.
The parade will start at Broad Street on the corner of Broad Street and Main Street, and it'll continue west down Main Street to South Street, White said.
Present in the parade, among others, will be Sistas with Horses, a Charlotte-based all-female saddle club, Dinosaur Riders, a Gastonia motorcycle club, and even some African American cowboys, White said.
EbonyFest will start at 5, after the parade, in the Rotary Centennial Pavilion in downtown Gastonia.
Cherie Jzar, Gastonia's diversity, equity and inclusion coordinator, will be the keynote speaker.
There will be several musical performances, awards to be given out to those who have made an impact in the community, and for the first time this year, fireworks.
"We're hoping that is also going to be a big draw, because this is our Fourth of July. We were not free on July 4, 1776," White said.
The festival will be "family friendly," White said. "No vulgarity, no issues, no problems. It's family friendly."
This year will be the fourth year that EbonyFest has been held in Gastonia.
Reporter Kara Fohner can be reached at 704-869-1850 or at kfohner@gannett.com. Support local journalism by subscribing here.
This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: Gastonia, Belmont to hold Juneteenth celebrations
