WHY AUGUST QUARTERLY IS IMPORTANT?

The festival, during the years of slavery, provided a rare platform for those Africans held captive to worship GOD with each other, as well as with free men and women.  It was reported in the Wilmington Morning News in 1889 that “permission gave them one day of freedom…the opportunity to talk over the long deferred promise of freedom that everyone of them felt was some how ingrained in the religion of Jesus”.

This was one of the very few social opportunities for African Americans.  People who were separated from their relatives by the inhumanity of slavery, held reunions and persons separated a whole year met to spend the day together.  It was the one social event of the year where people could show off clothes, gather to tell stories, dance, share African music, good humor and home style cooking.

The festival provided a forum for free African Americans to discuss colonization and other issues of slavery.  It also gave some people the opportunity to escape slavery.  This was so prevalent that some whites became suspicious of the August Quarterly festival, and older people in the Black community would sometimes refer to the festival as “Big excursions on the Underground Railroad”.

The event commemorates the founding of African Union Methodism.  “Those affiliated with the Spencer Churches are reminded of the bitter struggles of Peter Spencer, William Anderson and the 40 or so other Blacks who struck a great blow for religious freedom”.  A year after Spencer’s death in 1843, and until today, the festival has included a wreath laying ceremony to remember the leader of the African Union of Churches and the founder of the August Quarterly Festival.

The festival kept alive the ecumenical spirit amount African American church men and women of a variety of backgrounds.  At one time, Black churches in Wilmington and the surrounding communities, of various denominations and backgrounds, would close down on Big Quarterly Sunday to join the festival.