It’s the final weekend of August, and there’s still summer fun happening even after the kids went back to school.
The Around the World Cultural Food Festival will be the biggest event of the weekend, bringing visitors to Alexandria’s Oronoco Bay Park for food, performances and vendors. Other notable events include the annual remembrance event for lynching victim Benjamin Thomas and the Alexandria City High School Titans’ first home football game of the season.
An NAACP official will be the keynote speaker of Alexandria’s annual remembrance event for one of its two documented lynching victims in city history.
The Alexandria Community Remembrance Project will host the “Civil Rights in Uncertain Times” conversation with Myesha Braden, deputy general counsel for the NAACP, from 7-8 p.m. Friday, Aug. 28 at Shiloh Baptist Church (1401 Jamieson Avenue). Braden, a Tulane Law graduate, has worked on civil rights and has served in positions at the Department of Justice and in the nonprofit sector.
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Steven Hahn will address political violence and democracy at a remembrance event for Benjamin Thomas, a Black man lynched in Alexandria 126 years ago.
The Aug. 8 event at Shiloh Baptist Church, located at 1401 Jamieson Ave., will run from 6:30 to 8 p.m., with doors opening at 6:15 p.m. The program marks the anniversary of Thomas’ death on Aug. 8, 1899.
