SARATOGA SPRINGS — The Frederick Allen Elks Lodge #609 Presents Gospelfest ‘23, hosted by Pitney Meadows Community Farm on Sunday, May 28.
The event takes place 2-5 p.m. and features the Heavenly Echoes, Dr. MaryNell Morgan-Brown, Audrina Hill, Milayne Jackson & Blue Train, and more. Refreshments and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream cups available while they last.
Free & open to the public, this year’s event calls forward the origin of the nationally celebrated “Memorial Day” in Charleston, South Carolina’s May 1, 1865 “Decoration Day” - when 10,000 people, mostly newly-freed African Americans, members of the 54th Massachusetts and other Black Union regiments as well as black clergy and white missionaries – held a parade memorializing the fallen Union soldiers of Hampton Park’s prison. Participants decorated the soldiers’ new graves, as the dead had been exhumed from the mass burial site at the former Washington Race Course and, finally, given a proper burial, following the end of the Civil War.
GospelFest takes place at Pitney Meadows Community Farm, 223 West Ave, Saratoga Springs. For more information, call 518-691-2499.
