On Sept. 11, Johnson City will welcome the 23rd annual Umoja Festival to downtown. The Umoja Festival, with its name derived from the Swahili term for “unity,” was created with the intent of bringing people together in harmony and “combining to include all,” according to the website.
The Umoja Festival originated as an annual Unity Picnic in 1978 and hosted several organizations across Northeast Tennessee such as the NAACP, the Concerned Citizens Group, Carver Recreation Center and various citizens from the surrounding region.
The picnic provided an atmosphere where residents could gather to share meals, play games and discuss things going on in their area. However, the spark fizzled as quickly as it had been lit, and after a couple of years, the Unity Picnic was reduced to merely a memory. In 1997, the Umoja Festival was dreamed up by several of the original founders of the Unity Picnic.
“They became the keepers of the dream with the original purpose of maintaining a celebration of ethnic diversity and a universal life,” reads the Umoja Festival website.
Currently, the Umoja Festival, occasionally referred to as the Unity Day Festival, takes place over the span of three days and the course of a weekend at the end of the summer.
The celebration features food trucks, merchandise vendors, entertainers, speakers and concludes with a church service on Sunday. The festival works to highlight and emphasize the importance of breaking down the barriers between people of diverse cultures and races, thus bringing them together in unity.
The website describes the Umoja Festival as being “an event that pulls together all peoples of the community.”
This year, the Umoja Festival will be held at the King Commons Park in downtown Johnson City and is free to anyone who would like to attend. The festival is set to feature artists such as Florencia Rusiñol, The Company Band and Plunky and Oneness Band. It will take place over the span of a single day and is expected to harbor a crowd of over 6,000 eventgoers.
More information on the Umoja Festival can be found at umojajc.org.
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