Kwanzaa is a holiday that honors tradition and deepens the understanding of Black culture, and the Cotton Club Museum and Cultural Center kicked off the week-long celebration of the seven-day holiday via Zoom on Sunday.
Gainesville’s first soil collection ceremony memorializes city’s lynching victims
About 100 community members, Gainesville residents and local officials gathered to honor the 12 victims February 22, 2021 | 6:30am EST
Alachua County Commissioner Marihelen Wheeler, 69, (right) and her granddaughter Tashayla Downer, 8, (left) fill a jar with soil to honor Andrew Ford at the Gainesville Soil Collection Ceremony on Feb. 20, 2021. Ford was lynched in Gainesville on Aug. 24, 1891, according to a pamphlet from the Alachua County Community Remembrance Project. Photo by Julia Cooper | The Independent Florida Alligator
Latoya Brazil didn’t know the story of how her great-grandfather Lester Watts was lynched in Gainesville until she was 17