New Hope community celebrates 4th of July with annual festival
NEW HOPE, Miss. (WCBI) – While there are many people celebrating the 4th of July weekend in various ways, one organization honors the holiday with unity.
This marks the 2nd annual New Hope Festival from the New Hope Strong organization.
The New Hope High School parking lot becomes jam-packed when it’s time for the annual New Hope Festival.
The event is also partnering with Tonja Rose for the 2nd annual Peace, Love, and Freedom festival.
President of the New Hope Strong organization, Tony Hannah, said the holiday weekend is the best time to bring the community together.
“We said, hey, let’s just combine them and do it all at one time,” Hannah said. “We know it’s hot, but we are taking all provisions; we’ve got Baptist Memorial Hospital out here. We’ve also got medics on hand; the District 3 volunteer fire department is here. So we are trying to take precautions if someone gets hot that we can handle that for them.”
The event started with an inaugural 5K fun run to benefit New Hope’s Track team.
Then it transitions to having arts, crafts, and food vendors alongside a car show and live music.
Vendors, more than 60 of them, said they appreciate events like the festival to help support their businesses.
“There are a lot of people here who are vending, and this is all they do for a living,” Jonathan Miller said. “Others do it as a sideline, so it helps inject money into people’s lives and their community to help support their families.”
Some people traveled out of state for the event and said the festival brought in a connection for everyone.
“I am a teacher here, so coming out to support the community that supports our kids and just hang out and run into some friends over the summertime,” Cheryl Sales said. “We are just coming out enjoying the time out here.”
“It’s been great,” Cheyann Sales said. “I love getting to just see everybody come together, see a real community tied together, and like she said, support a community that just supports one another. Especially not being from around here, you never know what to expect, so it’s been great to see everything tie together. It’s a very big family community out here.”
Hannah said events like the festival are important for a small community like New Hope.
“We all decided to come together because there’s nothing to do in New Hope, so we wanted to bring some family fun events to New Hope,” Hannah said. “Since then, it just blew up, and we have a core group that is about 16 people, no, and then we had over 50 volunteers from the community. So, it lets us know we need family-friendly events here in New Hope.”
The Peace, Love, and Freedom New Hope festival wraps up with a fireworks show.
