Back in the Day Festival prepares for day of joy near George Floyd Square

On Labor Day weekend, a block away from the grief of George Floyd Square, a neighborhood will gather for a celebration.

This is where people work. This is where people live. And on Saturday — with the return of the Southside Back in the Day Festival to Phelps Field Park — this is where people will play.

"Let's just get people together and not have it be [because of] a tragedy," said Shane Price, director of the Power of People Leadership Institute, who helped organize the festival this year. "In that community, tragedy rings too loudly."

The 11th annual gathering promises good food, great music, local vendors, drum lines, double-dutch jump rope exhibitions and joyous reunions. After a year of protest, pandemic and daily reminders of the murder of George Floyd, Price and his wife, Dr. Verna Price, worked to make a gathering that was already a celebration of community strength and unity into a space for community health and wellness.

There will be free haircuts from Haircuts for Change and free COVID vaccinations from Black Nurses Rock, with a bonus $50 thank-you-for-getting-vaccinated gift card for everyone who rolls up a sleeve. There will be free health screenings from the University of Minnesota Mobile Health Initiative.

"The theme this year is, 'What About the Children?' From an old African saying" among the Maasai people, Price said.

As the story goes, Maasai warriors would greet one another by asking, not after their own welfare, but about the children. The future. How are the children?

After the past year, festival organizers thought the children, and their parents and grandparents, could use the support of an entire community coming together around them again.

The Back in the Day Festival has grown into the sort of event people plan their end-of-summer vacations around.

But it started, back in the day, with a group of friends sitting around Lisa and Phillip Crawford's backyard, hitting on the best excuse ever for a party: "Why don't we figure out a way to get together on a happy note?"

"We started in our backyard with maybe 75 to 100 people," said Lisa Crawford. Most were high school classmates and friends from the 1970s or neighbors drawn to the smoke coming off the grill.

"People were lined up down the alley just for food," she said. "It was fun."

"We grew up at the park," Crawford said. "We turned it into a community event."

And then they turned a community event into a cherished community tradition.

"If you see the reaction of people who haven't seen each other for 20 years, it's just incredible to see the excitement on people's faces," Crawford said. "It's just been an opportunity to unify, for fellowship and just to have a good time with music, friends, food. It's just been wonderful to look forward to."

Four Minneapolis neighborhoods intersect near Phelps Park in one of the most diverse areas in the city. There are families who have lived there for generations. There are families who are newly arrived in the country.

The park was an anchor that united the neighborhoods. When Crawford was growing up, the park was the space where kids from different high schools — Central, Washburn and Roosevelt — came together to play tennis or listen to music, or hang out until the streetlights flickered on.

When the pandemic forced the festival to cancel last year, "it was an empty feeling," she said.

Now that it's back, "we just really want the youth to know, we can still do some positive things."

The Southside Back in the Day community festival runs from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday in Phelps Park, 701 E. 39th St.

Tradition has it that the weather is always beautiful in Phelps Park on festival day, so mask up, vax up and have fun.

jennifer.brooks@startribune.com