African-American Heritage Festival Coming In 2019

Genealogist partnering with Campbell University

February is Black History Month across the country and a locally-known genealogist and author is teaming with Campbell University for a special event.

Desi Campbell announced he is teaming with the Buies Creek university in an effort to celebrate Black History Month with several different events at several different venues leading up to a Saturday, Feb. 16, celebration on the campus in the Carter Gym.

He plans to emulate a similar event which takes place annually in Savannah, Ga. The city there has teamed with Savannah State University to bring together all of the elements of a larger scale festival according to Mr. Campbell.

“The school and the City of Savannah teamed up to put on what they call the Black Heritage Festival,” Mr. Campbell said. “They did something pretty much everyday, they have jazz symposiums, they had round tables — and we’re going to do round tables as well — they had discussions on the campus. They had a big gospel concert, it was big and they brought in various artists throughout that month.”

The African-American Heritage Festival will bring together genealogical research with local vendors and families wishing to share the knowledge and information obtained through efforts to discover family lineage.

“One big event will be on the campus at Campbell,” he said. “That’s what we’re calling the Grand Festival Day, which is where we’re going to have vendors, family histories, entertainment. Not all vendors are selling stuff, but people that have family histories, different agencies from North Carolina that did African-American history, we’re going to try and make it an educational day so we can involve the school systems.”

It will be followed on Sunday, Feb. 17, by what Mr. Campbell hopes will be a very successful gospel music concert featuring entertainers from the professional and collegiate choral ranks.

“We’re still waiting on some confirmations,” he said. “We know Patrick Love, a recording artist out of Charlotte, and we have some college choirs coming.”

Mr. Campbell also hopes to unite the many students in Harnett County with a kid’s choir for the event. He hopes to attract students from Harnett County for a concert during the festival on Saturday.

“We’re planning to pull together a kid’s choir to perform on Saturday,” he said. “We want to combine them from all the Harnett County Schools.”

Other events Mr. Campbell hopes to see come to fruition during the festival include a guest speaker, former host of the television program “Genealogy Road Show,” Kenyatta Berry.

-Dunn Daily Record