Dunbar Easter Parade tradition keeps marching

The Dunbar Easter Parade was started in the early 1940s to give people of color a parade of their own when they couldn’t participate in the Edison Festival of Light. It remains a major event in the Dunbar community, especially for those who remember marching in it decades ago.

Marion Smallwood Jackson still remembers the dreams she had of being in the Dunbar Easter Parade over 50 years ago.

“I would go out and peep around when I was about 4 or 5 with Mom and see all the band lining up and hear the music and the musicians, and I said, ‘One day, I am going to be in that parade,'” Jackson said.

Jackson made that dream a reality, first in 4th grade on her decked-out bicycle.

“I had on lavender; I’ll never forget,” Jackson said. “That was my favorite color, lavender, and my bike had all of the beautiful decorations and the spinners and the lavender and the white. And, oh, I had on a beautiful little pant outfit. And I was just waving and riding.”

Her next time marching in the parade was several years later.

“I grew up, and then I went and got in high school, and that was my next occasion,” Jackson said. “I became the head majorette of the Dunbar High School Marching Band, and I marched in that parade several times.”

For Edward Hardin, the vice president of the Dunbar Festival Committee, the event is just as fresh as the dream Evelyn Sams Canady first had in the early 1940s. A dream for people who look like Marion Smallwood Jackson to have a parade they could march in.

“We know back during those periods of time that people of color were not allowed to celebrate in the parade,” Hardin said. “So, she started her own parade. And they began, and they would come, and they would love decorating baskets, Easter baskets, they would decorate wheelbarrows, everything they could find.”

Now the tradition of the Dunbar Easter Parade has grown into a major event that Hardin and Jackson still get just as excited about as in their youth.

“I can’t wait; I’ve already got my little comfortable shoes; I got me a little hat… I bought me a little cap this time because they say it’s going to be sunny,” Jackson said.

They know that the roots of the celebration give it an undimmed relevance in Dunbar.

“It’s almost unexplainable, but it’s one that Fort Myers needed,” Hardin said. “I always say to people all the time that nobody can celebrate Easter like Fort Myers, the 239.”

Jackson also knows that she will have a very different role in the 79th Dunbar Easter parade.

“The only thing now is where am I going to sit to watch my parade and all my little kids and all of them walk?” Jackson said. “Now, it’s going to be another era. The younger people—which is my children, or maybe my children’s children—now they’re having the parade.”

It takes over six months to prepare for the parade, which is seeing some changes of its own. The Easter coronation returns for 2023, and the parade route is being switched up.

“We’re going to run it backward this year, as opposed to… we used to go down MLK, down to Palm Avenue, and then back to the Stars Complex,” Hardin said. “Well, this year is going to actually do it in the reverse.”

The parade will start down Ford Street, take a right onto Edison Avenue, then take a final right onto Palm Avenue, ending on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

“It used to always kind of be primarily with people of African American culture,” Hardin said. “But we’ve kind of spun it from being like a big family reunion to, it’s actually a networking event.”

Regardless of the event’s natural evolution, its essence and its history have remained the same.

“I can see Ms. Sams now, in heaven, smiling… her work wasn’t in vain,” Jackson said. “She had a dream, and she did it. She brought something to our community that we can always remember for the rest of our days.”

Dunbar has a whole lineup of events for Easter weekend, starting with the return of the Dunbar Easter coronation on Friday. The parade starts at 3 p.m. on Sunday.