Journey Home Festival Goes Live during Liberia's Bicentennial
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Loading... - Nina Quansah
- 18 Aug 2022
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Liberia’s bicentennial celebrations will take a fortuitous turn this weekend, as guests arrive in the country for a week-long event called the ‘Journey Home Festival’. According to the organizers, the festival, which runs from June 17-26, 2022, celebrates Liberia as the Door of Return and directly connects the country’s African American heritage through an exchange of culture, lifestyle, education, entrepreneurship and other opportunities.
Many African-Americans have, in recent years, flocked to West Africa in search of a place connected to their ancestry. Some have discovered their ancestral bearings through DNA mapping — a way to reestablish their roots on the Continent of Africa.
And while Senegal and Ghana have become hot-spots for these heritage-minded kinfolk, festival entrepreneurs Saqar Ahhah Ahershu and Den Tut Rayay say a major destination — the Republic of Liberia — is missing from the conversation.
“I think Liberia is one of the easiest places for African Americans to acclimate because the culture is akin to America and the people of Liberia are very hospitable. There is a lot of African American heritage in the country,” Ahershu told the Daily Observer.
A major highlight of the Journey Home Festival this year will be the celebration of ‘Juneteenth’.
For those who may not know, Juneteenth is a federal holiday in the United States, commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. Juneteenth begets its name from the “June 19th” (get it?) announcement of General Order No. 3 by Union Army general Gordon Granger, in the year 1865, proclaiming freedom for enslaved people in Texas, which was the last state of the Confederacy with institutional slavery. Read More...
