Palmetto's Heritage Festival

FREE FUN FOR ALL AGES

​Activities throughout the Park!

On Saturday, March 9th, from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm, local history will be celebrated during Palmetto’s Heritage Festival at Palmetto Historical Park & Manatee County Agricultural Museum, 515 10th Ave. West, Palmetto. This FREE event will have a park open house and activities for the whole family. The 1880 Heritage Station Post Office will be operational with a one-day-only cancellation designed by Kaylee Schauer, a local middle school student. Bring your stamped mail! 

Word of Mouth BBQ and Frosted Pink Artisan Cookies will be on site with delicious food available for purchase.

A special feature of this year’s Heritage Festival is The Original Florida Highwaymen Art Show & Sale. Artists scheduled to be on-site include: Curtis Arnett, R.L. Lewis, Doretha Hair Truesdell, and Roderick Hair. In addition, Mary Ann Carroll’s daughter, Kandie Ingram, will be showing the work of her mother, and Charles Walker’s and Livingston Roberts’ work will be shown by Gertrude Walker. Original artwork and prints will be for sale. Vintage paintings by deceased artists Alfred Hair, Harold Newton, Rodney Demps, and James Gibson will also be available for purchase along with some works by Roy McLendon and Sam Newton.

The Florida Highwaymen are a small group of African American landscape artists who began painting in the late 1950s. The paintings were then sold out of the trunk of their cars, as the artists went from door to door at homes and business offices or set up shop on a busy corner at the side of the road. Their bright and sultry images of Florida’s tropical beauty were sold for as little as twenty or thirty dollars. Today, their paintings are widely sought after collectibles.

The Highwaymen originated from the Fort Pierce, Florida area when a white artist, Albert Ernest “Bean” Backus began to tutor a young African American teen named Alfred Hair. “Bean” not only taught Hair, but he influenced other young artists interested in exploring their creativity and developing a similar, yet unique style of their own, as well as making a living outside of the back-breaking labor in citrus groves and tomato fields. In 1995 the term “Highwaymen” was coined by Jim Fitch, a Florida museum curator, who wrote an article about the artists for the magazine “Antiques and Art Around Florida.”

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Event is sponsored by Angelina "Angel" Colonneso - Manatee County Clerk of the Circuit Court, Friends of Manatee County Agricultural Museum, Palmetto Historical Commission, and City of Palmetto.