Cultural festival to have parade, town hall forum

The festival's namesake was a proponent of the 'Back to Africa' movement.
YOUNGSTOWN -- The Marcus Garvey Association is having its annual African Cultural Festival, beginning with a parade at 10 a.m. Aug. 5.
The festival will be at Mill Creek Community Center, 496 Glenwood Ave. This year's festival theme is "The Excellence In Us."
A combined parade, sponsored by the association and the Kenmore Avenue Block Party, will start at Hillman and Warren avenues. The parade will then go down Hillman to Kenmore, then to Glenwood, ending at the community center.
A town hall forum will follow at 1 p.m. featuring members of the Mahoning Valley's criminal justice profession. The forum topics will include police-community relations, the role of the prosecutor in the judicial system, juvenile diversion programs in the city for black youths, and the negative effects of having a juvenile criminal record.
Essay contest
There also will be an essay contest featuring Youngstown elementary, junior high and high school children. Three cash awards and copies of one of Marcus Garvey's books will be presented to the authors of the three best-written essays.
There will be live entertainment from local artists throughout the day.
Garvey was born Aug. 17, 1887, in Jamaica, and died June 10, 1940, in London. He was a publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, crusader for black nationalism and founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League.
While in America, he is best remembered as an important proponent of the "Back to Africa" movement, which encouraged people of African descent to return to their ancestral homelands. Jamaica proclaimed Garvey as its first national hero in the 1960s.