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The Wrightsville Renewal Festival, which coincides with the traditionally known “Homecoming,” celebrates family, community and the creative spirit. The Festival was initiated in August 2006 with the intent of extending the “Homecoming” tradition to a larger public in order to revitalize the historic community of Wrightsville and the surrounding area. The “Homecoming” tradition was started in 1957, founded by Mrs. Beatrice White Wilson with co-founded, Mrs. Celestine Wilson McClinton, as a means of reuniting families and friends who lived or were associated with the village of Wrightsville. We wish to continue this honored tradition by offering those who attend the festival an experience of artistic, cultural, personal, and spiritual renewal.
Settled in 1867, after the Civil War by freed slaves Archie and Mary Wright, Wrightsville is one of the many vanishing African American communities struggling to hold on to its’ place in the history of the American landscape. Wrightsville distinguishes its self from other African American communities in the western part of Virginia by being the only African American community in Alleghany County and the first to establish a Masonic Lodge for African Americans at the turn-of-the-century, Archie Wright Lodge # 311. (Now merged with the Covington Masonic Lodge)
Wrightsville is also distinguished, by having one of the first established African American restaurateur’s, William B. McClinton Sr. who own and operated the Golden Arrow Tea Room and Restaurant, which was a major stopping point for top entertainers and entrepreneurs traveling from north to south on old highway route 60 during the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s. And finally, the Wrightsville Baptist Church constructed 1904, one of the oldest surviving structures built by African American in Alleghany County.
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