Events this year included martial arts demonstrations, a petting zoo, a health, education and labor fair, an ice cream eating contest and a spades tourney. Children enjoyed bounce houses, as well as a tent just for them and basket raffle.

“We work all year to get this running,” committee member Laurie Williams told the OBSERVER this weekend. “We start the very next day after the event and plan all year.”

With next year being the 30th anniversary of the event they’re hoping to get a bigger name band for next year.

“At the first Juneteenth, we had a band from North Carolina that the pastor (Frank Torain) used to play with when he was a teenager, so it would be nice if we could get that band back for the 30th,” Williams added. “We just wanna make it bigger and better. We have 20 vendors this year and we need 30 for 30!”

The event committee is hoping to get as many vendors if not more for next year and they want to work a little bit harder to get the word out.

“The one thing we definitely need is we need more people on the committee,” event organizer Frank Torain shared. “We want to spread this thing out and if we get more people on the committee it allows us the opportunity to.”

Four years ago, the event committee managed to secure an endowment which the interest from pays for the majority of the festival.

“One of the things that we’re trying to do is see if we can get together and bring in some businesses to hopefully donate more to the endowment,” Torain stated. “This way we get more interest off the endowment. We’d also like to get sponsors to help pay for certain things.”

On Sunday, the event morphs into a gospel fest, which Torain is trying to also build up.

“We are trying to see if we can make the gospel fest a little bit bigger by perhaps having another group next year, we’re gonna try and get another group from Erie,” Torain noted. “This event is a celebration of Black culture, but it’s also an education on Black culture. Not only are we educating our own, but we’re also educating those people who are not black. This is Black culture, this is what it looks like. You see all the negative stuff. We don’t want to promote the negative stuff. We want to promote the positive stuff.”

For those who are interested the committee meets each month at Pizza Village on the first Monday of the month. For more information, please reach out to Torain at Open Door 3 Church of God in Christ located at 59 Lake Shore Drive in Dunkirk.