This Friday’s Juneteenth celebration in Manchester will include art, music, poetry, and free COVID-19 testing.
Tia Parker, one of the event’s organizers, says they asked the city for a testing site because there are often barriers to COVID-19 testing in African American communities.
“So I want to make sure that this event also had something like that tied into it,” she says. “Just have a place where you can call the number, and there’s no cost to you, and you can come just get tested and have that accessibility.”
The testing will be walk-up and available by appointment only from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday outside the YWCA in Manchester. Appointments can be made by calling the Manchester COVID-19 hotline at 603-668-1547.
The rest of the day’s Juneteenth festivities will take place down the street, on a grassy area outside of The Hop Knot restaurant. The lineup includes speakers, hip hop artists, poets, and chef Robb Curry of Madear’s Southern Eatery & Bakery, who will talk about African-American food and the history behind it.
Curry, who helped plan the event, says there will also be census takers, voter registration, and an educational scavenger hunt that ties African-American inventions to locations around Manchester.
“Like, for instance, it was an African American who invented the elevator,” he says. “And as a lot of people know, Otis Elevator is actually on Holt Street.”
The day will also include virtual panels of black leaders from around New Hampshire that people can participate in from home.
