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    Black Easter Traditions Across The Diaspora Easter Sunday Fun Day! / Houston Chronicle/Hearst Images/Getty Images By Bridgette Bartlett Royall ·Updated April 3, 2026 Getting your Trinity Audio player ready…

    For those who celebrate Easter, or were raised around loved ones who do, the religious springtime holiday is typically >dressing up in fancy pastel ‘fits, getting a fresh View this post on Instagram

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    “My grandmother always started her garden on Good Friday. She planted okra, green beans, cucumbers, squash and corn,” Marie Hatcher reminisces about growing up in rural North Carolina. She continues, “We had church service on Good Friday (sometimes around noon and then again at night). The sermon usually included the seven last words — of Jesus. Dinner on Good Friday was a celebration. We would eat fried fish but usually chicken too. In the south, we ate fish for dinner on Fridays all year.”

    Other Black southern food traditions on Easter weekend include ham for dinner on Sunday, complete with a sweet glaze, pineapples and cherries and deviled eggs (always garnished with a sprinkle of paprika) and other treasured soul food side dishes.

    “Another Southern Easter tradition was parents buying their kids live chicks that were often called biddies. They were short lived, if you were lucky, they lived a couple of days!” Hatcher recalls.

    Hatcher adds that little girls typically wore hats (or bonnets) and gloves. Children had to memorize some type of speech that was recited in front of the church congregation on Easter Sunday morning.

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    Says Hatcher, “On Easter Monday there was more egg hunting, games and most people didn’t work. It was a fun time. When I moved to NYC, I was shocked that people went to work on Easter Monday!”

    AFRICAOn a huge continent with more than 50 countries where dozens of languages and dialects are spoken, the traditions of any holiday are guaranteed to be tremendous in number. Here are a couple interesting and rarely discussed ones we uncovered:

    In

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