JOIN US IN CELEBRATING
AFRICAN AMERICAN CULTURE

PROGRAM SCHEDULE   -   MAP OF EVENT

View video from last year!

link to this years highlights!

Through:

• Art
• Music
• Dance
• Storytelling
• Historical Exhibits & Presentations
• Ethnic Food & Interactive Family Activities

DATE: Saturday, February 28, 2009 
(This event is held annually on the last weekend of February)

TIME: 11 A.M. to 5:30 P.M.

PLACE: Largo, Florida
(Heritage Village, The Florida Botanical Gardens, Pinellas County Extension)

BRING YOUR FAMILY & FRIENDS FOR A FULL DAY OF GREAT ENTERTAINMENT, DELICIOUS FOOD & CHILDREN'S ACTIVITIES!

Featuring:

• A variety of African influenced musical performances including jazz, gospel, rhythm & blues and reggae.

• African American art show and marketplace

• Hands-on art activities for children and adults

• Storytelling and puppetry

• Ethnic cooking demonstrations

• Tours through Heritage Village's historic structures, the Gulf Coast Museum of Art, and the Florida Botanical Gardens, with special displays featuring African plants.

• Ethnic Food vendors

HISTORY

The “Florida African American Heritage Celebration” is an outgrowth of the “North Pinellas County African American History Project.” The project is jointly sponsored by the Pinellas County Historical Society, Pinellas County Schools, the Pinellas County African American History Museum, Inc., and the Pinellas County Board of County Commissioners. The purpose of the project – which now includes all of Pinellas County – is to collect, catalog, and preserve oral histories, photographs, artifacts, and other documentation relevant to the history of the African American communities in Pinellas County over the last 135 years.

The project got underway during the summer of 1999, when a small group of citizens and teachers met with staff members from Heritage Village and the Pinellas County Department of Community Development to discover what resources the County might be able to provide for a proposed African American history museum in north Pinellas County. While Heritage Village had photographs, oral histories, and other memorabilia depicting a portion of south county’s black heritage, there was little in the way of north county documentation. To help remedy the situation, the Department of Community Development granted $25,000 to the Pinellas County Historical Society in historic preservation monies for the purchase of computers, a high-resolution scanner, video camera and other equipment needed to copy photographs and conduct oral histories in the unincorporated areas that Community Development served. With the necessary equipment in hand and an enthusiastic corps of volunteers ready to begin work, only one challenge remained – how to spread public awareness of the project.

The “Pinellas County African American Heritage Day,” held in February 2000 at Heritage Village, was conceived as a means to attract local African American residents who could help to identify the families and individuals in the collection of old photographs beginning to accumulate in the archives at Heritage Village. In addition, citizens were encouraged to bring their historic photographs to contribute to the Villages' collection and to that of the planned African American museum by allowing the Heritage Village staff to make high quality copies on the spot. With this intent, the 2000 Heritage Day planning committee developed a full range of activities that celebrated African American culture to aid in this mission. A racially diverse crowd of almost 1500 attended that inaugural event, and Heritage Village more than doubled its collection of local African American photographs in a single day.

Driven by the success of the festivities in 2000, organizers changed the name to one that truly embraced the scope and quality of activities to be presented - the “Florida African American Heritage Celebration.”

Thanks to Sponsors of the 2008 Event!