The 35th annual Stone Soul Festival kicks off Labor Day weekend

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WGGB/WSHM) – A city staple is back in Springfield this weekend, as the Stone Soul Festival celebrated its 35th anniversary this year. It’s one of our area’s biggest bashes for Black culture, with good vibes matched with even greater food and fun.

Imani Wiggins-Johnson came as a kid, and now her kids are eating their way through the festival.

“The Stone Soul is a beautiful experience of our community coming together and having so many different vendors and sponsors and free breakfast for our children. I love bringing my children to it,” she said. “It’s amazing seeing the full circle, me being the Stone Soul, my parents being a vendor and now being able to participate as a person coming.”

There’s fun and then there’s giving back.

Kids as part of the local chapter of Jack and Jill of America are making sure their underprivileged classmates are ready for study hall.

“We’re giving out notebooks, pens and pencils, markers, colored pencils, and glue sticks as well,” Savannah Westmoreland told us. “Your community might not have everything so you want to make sure they have what they need so that they can go to school or just live their everyday life because people need things more than you do.”

You can do your part too, not with charity, but by being a consumer.

Maryland Marjorie Huddleston owns NSAA African Creations, and her business has opened up a pop-up shop at the festival for the last five years.

“Supporting a black business is vital for the economic growth of this whole entire country. When you think about a black business you think about family. Not just them, but the generations after them,” she told us. “These beads were made in a little city named Kaforta in Ghana, so the money that you’re spending with me is going back to the continent, so that continent can grow.”

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