African American Family Festival in Wilmington celebrates culture, raises COVID-19 awareness

African folk music played through the Herman M. Holloway, Sr. Park in Wilmington, as the community gathered on Saturday to participate in the 25th African American Family Festival.

The festival, designed to celebrate “everything African,” also serves as an opportunity to raise awareness about social issues – including COVID-19. 

“We want to do good things for the people in our community so they don’t feel like all good things happen in majority-white neighborhoods,” said Harmon Carey, the event organizer. “A lot of African American festivals have moved away from the community, near white communities or they have completely stopped doing events.” 

The aroma of African cuisines filled the park, as children playfully jumped in a bounce house, and adults gathered around jewelry and clothing stalls, adorned with traditional African stones and colorful fabrics. 

A Mobile Health Unit set up by The Life Health Center conducted COVID-19 tests and encouraged people to get vaccinated. 

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“It is kind of a hit and miss, but every time I come out I cross my fingers and hope that we get a good response,” said Kymé McCleary, a nurse at the mobile unit. 

The unit focused on vaccinating children age 12 and above with the Pfizer vaccine during the first half of the event, followed by adults for the later part of the day. 

While she hopes to see more people come out, McCleary said the response from the urban Black and brown community has been slow.

The African American community is hesitant for a number of reasons, according to Forrest Watson, president of the Life Health Center, but "fear" and "mistrust" surrounding the healthcare system is the primary reason.

“It’s a marathon and the African-American community is behind the Caucasian community in terms of the percentage of people who have been fully vaccinated,” Watson said. “There is a digital divide in our community preventing people to virtually sign up for a vaccine, and this particular community here has a higher rate of housing instability as well, not to mention a lack of trust in the medical system given our history.” 

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Watson referred to the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment, which was funded by the U.S. government. For about 40 years, until 1972, hundreds of Black men were told they were receiving free medical care. But they weren’t told they had been infected with syphilis – and weren’t receiving proper care to treat it because the government wanted to study how the disease progressed untreated.

The key to increasing vaccination rates among the African American community is by building trustworthy relationships with people, according to Watson, who said he believes it might take two to three years to fully vaccinate everyone in the community. 

“Even if we vaccinate 10 people today, that’s not a failure," he said. "That’s a success.” 

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Apart from vaccination units, organizations like Delaware Africa Coalition, First State Community Action Agency, the Wilmington Fire Department and the Delaware Fatherhood and Family Coalition were present at the event.

“We work with families that are in crisis in New Castle County with problems like rent, electric and water bills and childcare,” said Shirley Larke, a family consultant from the First State Community Action Agency. “Today we are giving out information to people who are unaware of our program that we are here to help them."

In their first-ever collaboration with the African American Heritage Society, the Delaware Africa Coalition set up their tent to help the community take pride in their identity and “celebrate African culture and the descendants from the continent of Africa.”

“We want to make sure that we are a thriving community in Delaware and that we deliberately participate in the development of our state,” said Kevin Coleman, the public relations chairperson for Delaware Africa Coalition. “We all come from the same continent regardless of where we were raised and that makes our community even richer. This is an opportunity to learn about each other and put our resources together.”