Two Carnivals, One City

I was surprised to learn that there was more than one Caribbean carnival in Atlanta. I only found out about one carnival during a Google search and saw nothing in that search about a second carnival. I learned of the second carnival when several respondents informed me that tensions within the community led to two separate carnivals.

From what I learned from my respondents, the two carnivals occur on the same day (or during the same weekend, generally) in different parts of the metro area, with the original/older one taking place in the downtown area and the second/newer one taking place in a different location year after year (generally an area with a large Caribbean population, such as Lithonia or Stone Mountain). One of the respondents in this study, Andrew, a Trinidadian-born migrant who moved to Atlanta from New York in the 1994 and was one of the original carnival’s organizers during the 1990s, told me that the older and younger generations of migrants in the Atlanta Caribbean community divided their affiliations and the carnival too. The older generation organizes theirs in downtown Atlanta and the younger generation organizes a separate one that takes place outside of the city, in the surrounding suburbs (e.g., Stone Mountain). However, I suspect that the tensions that led to the split of the carnival are more complicated than a generational divide between the younger and older members of the Afro-Caribbean community in Atlanta.

At the core of the split of the carnivals, there seems to be an issue over who should be organizing, or which Caribbean island group should be organizing, Atlanta’s Caribbean Carnival—that is, the Trinidadians rather than the Jamaicans or the Caribbean-born rather than the American-born of Caribbean parentage have should be in control of the carnival’s organization. I learned from one of the co-founders of the original carnival, Alicia, a American-born migrant of St. Thomas-descent, that though at its inception the carnival steering committee was cross-cultural, with some whites, some African Americans, and representatives from each Caribbean group in Atlanta, eventually tensions arose concerning who should be involved in the carnival’s organization. She explained to me some of the tensions with other carnival organizers that she experienced due to her national background: “I was very involved for many years and I enjoyed it tremendously, although a lot of people felt that I should not have been involved because I am not a “Trini.” And the Trinis have a mark on carnival. I had a lot of tension and stress in that regard. A lot of them were involved but they wanted me nowhere around.” According to Alicia, she was eventually pushed her out of the carnival organization because of this issue with her background. So, I suspect over continued tensions over who should be organizing the city’s carnival likely led to the younger generation, and others who felt excluded from the carnival organization, to split from the group and create their own carnival.

Kevin, a New York-born migrant who moved to Atlanta in 1995 and whose father was a longtime leader of several Caribbean organizations in the Atlanta area, told me what he thought the two carnivals. He said:

The other carnival is in Decatur and younger people run it. They were college students when they broke off to start their own carnival. The first year their carnival was good because it was new and fresh. The next year they started getting greedy with the money and then it wasn’t good. They flip flopped but Peachtree Carnival is the official carnival and their carnival is not. 

Those who knew about the two carnivals told me that it was better when it was just one because they felt the community was too small for two. Very few mentioned the other carnival and of those who knew about it, most admitted to mainly attending the one downtown. The presence of more than one carnival has decreased the attendance for both carnivals by creating confusion on where or when they are taking place. Margaret, the leader of the Georgia Caribbean American Heritage Coalition, described how the division has had an effect on carnival attendance. She stated, “We have this major division during carnival. Last year there were three carnivals. But what happened was for two of them most people went downtown where it is supposed to be. There was one in midtown, which had a beautiful program but no people because everyone stayed downtown. The Stone Mountain group is mostly from Trinidad and had no one see their road march.”

The division has also created misinformation about the carnival and has shaped migrants’ views of the event. After my first experience at the carnival in downtown, one of my respondents, Alana, a New York-born migrant of Barbadian-descent in her mid thirties who moved to Atlanta in 1995 after college, informed me that the carnival used to be downtown but currently took place in Conyers, a city located 24 miles east of Atlanta. After I told her that there was one downtown that year, she replied, “I didn’t know there was one downtown. I have two Guyanese coworkers who went to the one in Conyers at the Horse Park and they said it was not well put together.” I was also told that the second carnival was in different places with significant Caribbean populations, including Decatur, Conyers, Lithonia, and Stone Mountain. Regardless of the knowledge about the carnivals or their locations, the consensus among the Afro-Caribbean migrants that I interviewed was that the Caribbean community in Atlanta was not big enough to have more than one carnival.

The fact that there are dueling carnivals at all shows the growing influence and presence of the Afro-Caribbean in Atlanta. Whether or not Afro-Caribbeans in Atlanta attend the carnival(s), the important thing is that Atlanta has a thriving Caribbean community that can support an annual carnival. The Afro-Caribbeans in this study reported moving to Atlanta for its black population and that the existence of Caribbean community there did not play a part in their decision to move. Many of them described a Caribbean community in Atlanta as an added bonus of moving there. The existence of a sizeable Caribbean community, Caribbean events, neighborhoods, and businesses adds to the migration experience for Afro-Caribbean migrants in Atlanta and allows them to build and foster a new Caribbean community and identity that incorporates their culture and new home in the South.