Cheyney McKnight waited years to celebrate Pinkster. |
On a scorching Saturday morning in May, McKnight put on her tailor-made 18th-century Malian mud cloth dress and trekked 7 miles with a dozen others to partake in a storied tradition. |
The group rattled shell shakers and tambourines and beat drums, strolling New York City sidewalks from an old farmhouse near the top of Manhattan to the New-York Historical Society, recreating a route free and enslaved Black people would have traveled in colonial times on Pinkster, the Dutch word for the Christian celebration of "Pentecost." |
The festival, which falls in May or June, began in the 1700s as a way for enslaved people in the region to escape isolation for a few days, promising joy, connection and dignity. |
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