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Dr. Tameka Hobbs interviews Evelyn Carter Grooms at the African American Research Library and Cultural Center on May 30, 2025. Grooms explains her genealogy on both her paternal and maternal sides of her family and where they are from. She recalls her childhood growing up in rural Springville within Columbia County, Florida and attending a Rosenwald school. She describes the activities and customs that celebrate May 20th, the Emancipation Day of enslaved peoples in Florida, both with her school and with her family and community. Grooms describes having devotion, playing field games, creating ribbons by ripping colorful cloth and plaiting the maypole. She explains that the May 20th celebrations and its history did not resonate with her when she was young, but she began to understand its significance during high school. She recalls celebrating with the local Black community under a large oak tree across the street from her home by having a barbecue, making "ice shivers" (a.k.a. snow cones or snowballs), women from the church and members from the Sunday Morning Band making sandwiches, and the adult men playing baseball. Before the celebration extended to the community, Grooms's family celebrated under a Chinaberry tree in their yard and provided food for free, but they charged to raise money for local churches, the Sunday Morning Band, and Florida Memorial College after it extended outside the family.

Dr. Tameka Hobbs interviews Iola Rebecca Daniels Glenn at the African American Research Library and Cultural Center on May 21, 2025. Glenn discusses her parents' origins and her maternal grandparents working on a plantation as enslaved people in Vienna, Georgia. She mentions that her paternal grandparents were Native Americans. Glenn recalls growing up in Ormond Beach, Florida as the first person in her immediate family of thirteen children to be born in Florida. She explains why the family moved from Georgia to Florida to support her aunt and her family, and how both families lived together in one house. She describes the work that her parents did growing up; her father doing yard work and hauling lumber from Bunnell to Ormond, and mother working as a maid taking care of families and their children. Glenn recalls attending Rigby Junior High School from first to eighth grade, then attending Campbell Street High School in Daytona Beach, Florida in ninth grade.

Dr. Tameka Hobbs interviews Loretta Scipio Whittle at the African American Research Library and Cultural Center on May 21, 2025. Whittle explains her genealogy starting with ancestors in West Africa to family in the United States as early as 1810 and ends with her parents. She recalls her childhood and growing up in White Springs, Florida on her family's 120-acre farm. She describes the experience of celebrating May 20th, the anniversary of Florida's Emancipation Day, with school closed and all-day festivities. She lists various foods commonly available and recalls listening to an emancipated griot woman who told stories and sang traditional African American spirituals. Whittle explains how many Black people became land owners in the area, and the community's belief in ghosts and telling ghost stories. She recalls her elementary school's role in celebrating May 20th and the students practicing plaiting the maypole and square dancing. Whittle states that the current May 20th celebrations are missing the traditions and storytelling aspects and that it is instead more about music, dancing, and selling food.