LIVINGSTON, Ala. – The Sucarnochee Folklife Festival returns April 18 for its 11th year at the Sumter County Courthouse Square in Livingston, Ala.

    “The color run is at 8 a.m., then the festival itself kicks off at 9 a.m. and lasts until 4 p.m.” said Dr. Tina Naremore Jones, executive director for the Center for the Study of the Black Belt.

    “Feel the vibe. Chew the fat. Live the tradition” is the slogan for the festival. The Sucarnochee Revue will provide a music show.

    “We have the music of the black belt. We have the food of the black belt and we even have competitions that people can enter,” Jones said. “We have pie, canned goods, barbecue sauce, and cornbread competitions.”

    There will be demonstrations on making pottery, weaving, basket making and quilting, as well as history lessons.

    “We have a living history camp as part of the festival,” Jones said “We have several historians who are portraying various individuals from our regions history. We have a woman who portrays a native American Creek woman and she will have her camp set up so you can see how she cooked, and see how her daily life was like. We will also have a woman demonstrating Native American finger weaving and other crafts.”

    There will also be plenty of food.

    “Everything from barbecue, baked potato, jambalaya, crawfish, and a whole lot more,” Jones said.

    “Really it’s a day that we celebrate the traditions of our region,” Jones said. “It’s about what life in the black belt really means.”

    The Sucarnochee Review gets it’s name from a local river with the same name.

    “It drains into the Tombigbee, but the name itself is a Choctaw name, and if you look up the meaning of the word, it mean ‘where the hogs cross,’ which is a perfect title for us since we are celebrating food, and in the state of Alabama this is the year of Alabama barbecue,” Jones said.