NEW YORK (AP) — New York City’s West Indian American Day Parade begins Monday with thousands of revelers dancing and marching through Brooklyn in one of the world’s largest celebrations of Caribbean culture.
The annual Labor Day eventnow in its 57th year, transforms the borough’s Eastern Parkway into a kaleidoscope of feathered costumes and colorful flags as participants make their way down the thoroughfare alongside floats piled high with speakers blasting soca and reggae music.
The parade routinely draws large crowds, which line the nearly 2 mile (3.2 km) route that runs from Crown Heights to the Brooklyn Museum. It is also a popular destination for local politicians, many of whom have West Indian heritage or represent members of the city’s large Caribbean community.
The event has its roots in more traditionally timed pre-Lenten carnival celebrations started by a Trinidadian immigrant in Manhattan around a century ago, according to organizers. The festivities were moved to the warmer time of year in the 1940s.
Brooklyn, where hundreds of thousands of Caribbean immigrants and their descendants have settled, began hosting the parade in the 1960s.
The Labor Day parade is now the culmination of days of carnival events in the city, which include a steel boiler competition and J’Ouvert, a separate Monday morning street party commemorating freedom from slavery.