The story
Roots and Heritage Festival in Lexington
The Roots and Heritage Festival is an annual celebration of African American culture and history held in Lexington's East End neighborhood, typically in September. The festival features a parade, live music, food vendors, craft and information booths, and programming honoring the neighborhood's historically Black community.
Lexington's East End developed as one of the city's principal historically Black neighborhoods in the decades following the Civil War, home to churches, businesses, schools, and community institutions built and sustained by generations of Black Lexington residents even as segregation and later urban redevelopment reshaped much of the neighborhood's physical footprint over the twentieth century.