Snow Hill celebrates Black history with fourth annual parade

SNOW HILL, N.C. (WITN) – Snow Hill held their fourth annual Black History Parade Saturday afternoon.

Everyone in Snow Hill was excited to bring the community together to focus on togetherness and history. Many of the folks say they’re still uncovering some of their history and that they hope that legacy continues with younger generations.

A parade empowering and encouraging the community to continue to learn about Black history filled the streets of Snow Hill on Saturday.

“It’s really impactful for our children and for the people here today because sometimes we do not know our history even with our grand marshal today we’re learning something about her we didn’t know,” said Faye Daniels, Greene Improvement Association member and commissioner. “So we’re continuing that legacy of what’s going on in the black community but again we share with everyone in the community.”

“It’s very important to me that we preserve our history document our history and showcase our history African-American history is really important and if we’re not careful, it could easily be erased,” said Yuvonka Davis, Greene County Schools Pre-K principal. “So events such as this having a black history parade here in our small community, it brings people together, but it gives you an opportunity to see all those people that have paved the way, even here within our community.”

Lenny Swinson grew up in Snow Hill and is the president of Taylor Swinson Cemetery Association. What started as an effort to clean up a family cemetery has now morphed into unearthing history and heritage.

“One story we found is that I have a cousin who is teacher of the year in 1976 for the United States of America. She met with President Gerald Ford Dr. Ruby Smithson and I didn’t even know that so all these stories reveal themselves to us,” said Swinson. “An effort to be more community focused as long as family, focus, family, history, focused, and black history focused we started to do all sorts of things and participate in this parade was one of those things.”

The Pastor of St.James AME Zion Snow Hill church, William Mcdow, also shared stories of important black historical figures, that can get overlooked. One of them being the inventor of the traffic light, Garrett Morgan.

The community and its leaders want to continue to show and instill history like that with younger generations too.

“Because there are people that wanna erase our history, but because you don’t accept, it doesn’t take away from the fact that’s true and so we continue to share our history and it’s important for our kids to see folks that look like them in positions of authority, school teachers bankers so that they can know if there’s an opportunity out there for them this is why we really push hard,” said Darius Shackleford, Greene County Schools board member.

The fellowship continued today with some food and gathering as well. 2026 also marks the 100th anniversary of Black History Month, a milestone represented by the parade’s 102-year-old grand marshal.

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