A long-running annual festival will kick off Friday.
This weekend, Columbus will host the 34th annual Seventh Avenue Heritage Festival.
Festival chairman Rick Mason said a stage will be set up at the intersection of Seventh Avenue North and 15th Street North. He said the festival is the largest free outdoor block party in Mississippi.
“It’s a fun-filled place for family entertainment to bring the community together on a positive note,” he said.
The festival will begin at about 7 p.m. Friday, Mason said, with local bands playing. Vendors will arrive around noon the same day to start setting up.
Saturday’s festivities will open at 10 a.m. with a parade that will start at the former Lee High School on Military Road. It will travel down Military Road, then turn onto 14th Avenue. It will continue from there and turn onto 20th Street, then onto Seventh Avenue to make its way to the stage area.
Mason said the festival will offer a variety of entertainment options throughout the afternoon, including gospel music performances that will start about noon. The festival will also feature karate expositions, health screenings, blood pressure testing, as well as kids’ activities.
Local artists, including Cupid, Juvenile, and Calvin Richardson, will perform Saturday evening.
The Seventh Avenue Heritage Festival draws inspiration from the area’s musical roots, Mason said.
“Seventh Avenue is a historical music area,” he said. “The Queen City Hotel used to be on the corner down there. People like B.B. King — old school singers stayed in the hotel.”
Mississippi House District 41 Rep. Kabir Karriem, who chaired the festival for 16 years, said the Queen City Hotel was demolished in 2007. The property, which is currently owned by the Weatherspoon family, is a location on the Mississippi Blues Trail. The Blues Trail, managed by the Mississippi Blues Commission, highlights locations throughout the state that are important to Mississippi’s blue’s musical heritage.
“We have hopes of one day building a replica with the Weatherspoon family and making it a park one day,” Karriem said.
The festival draws thousands of people ever year. Karriem said the event has come a long way from its beginnings as an informal celebration in the community.
“I remember the humble beginnings of the festival,” he said. “It was just a flatbed truck with kids dancing on it with music. Now we’ve had thousands of people here on the blocks. We’ve never had a surveyor here to count the crowd, but we’ve had people from Seventh Avenue all the way to 10th Street North just standing in the street trying to get to the stage.”
For more information on the festival, contact Mason at 662-386-6064.
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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