The summer of soul was the Harlem Music Festival that took place over the course of six weeks during the summer of 1969. It took place in Mt.Morris park where about 300,000 people attended. The festival can be described as an Ultimate Black BBQ. The Harlem Music Festival created a party atmosphere and a place for black people to embrace their culture with music, food, and fashion. Before the festival the summer time meant a time of violence especially for black people. The death of many had struck in years to come before the festival like John F Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. The Vietnam War was also going on and many black men were on the front of the battle field. This caused anger among black people and created a division between non violent protesters and violent protesters. 1969 was a change of era for the black community and sparked a revolution. Although somewhat divided music brought everyone together. The Harlem Music Festival was brought to the community by Tony Lawrence and members of the Harlem community. The festival brought iconic performers like Stevie Wonder, The Chambers Brothers, BB. King, Herbie Mann, 5th Dimension, Gladys Knight and more. 

Before watching the Summer of Soul documentary I thought it was just going to be about different performers during that time period. However the film was much more, it was impactful. The film showed how the black community created unity with each other through music and culture. There were all walks of people at the festival, young, old, and middle aged. It was a cultural event that that allowed black people to unplogethically black and was a time where the negro died and the black person was born. In the film it was stated that in the early 60s if you called somebody black that means you wanted to fight them because white people made the word black have a negative connotation. This shocked me because we are now in a time where people are proud to black and some people try to be black.