On September 15, 2026, the Prince George's County Council held a special event to celebrate National African Immigrant Heritage Month. The event, hosted by council members who are daughters of African immigrants, featured musical performances, a documentary screening, a proclamation reading, and remarks from council members. The meeting took place in the council chamber (the usual hearing room was under renovation) and was attended by council members, staff, and community members.
Moment. Oh, thank you. For the contact of this moment, really excited to be a daughter of an African immigrant. Those that know my dad is from Kenya. My mom is from Kansas City, Kansas. So very odd match, but it works for them. And so I'm really excited that we have the opportunity to host this as council members. As many know there's three daughters of immigrants that serve on the council. So you'll hear from councilmember Fisher and Councilmember Blague. But I just wanted to welcome everyone to the council. We're so used to always having these events downstairs in the hearing room, but it's under renovation. So thank you to the amazing staff that switched things up and made sure that we had the space to host this event here today. So well, yes. Welcome. So on the agenda today, we'll have some musical performances. Our mistress of ceremonies will be honorable councilmember Bougay and Councilmember Fisher. We'll have a reading of the proclamation, another performance and closing remarks. On the 25th 25th. So hopefully, if you guys can attend that, it'll be an amazing opportunity. We award uh amazing members of our community from the African Diaspora that are doing great work right here in Prince George's County. Uh our keynote speaker will be our county executive, and then we also have the first lady of Sierra Leone that will be joining us this year. So it'll be an amazing event hosted at Metro Points. Uh, but as always, I just wanna start by saying that we have such a diverse um community right here in Prince George's County. When we look at uh the population of business owners in Prince Georgia's County, we look at minority businesses, the highest percent that we see is from our African brothers and sisters. And so we know that they are a huge population that is one pouring into the county economically. Um, and what's so such a great opportunity for what we see in Prince Georgia's County is Prince George County is also a majority black and brown community, majority black county. And so we have this intersection of two things happening. Um, those of African descent, where their family, there's a huge tortured history of how they got here, and then an amazing rich culture of those that decide to immigrate and immigrate into the US and make Prince George's County their home. And we're intertwining to grow Prince George's County into what I like to call is this could be our real Wakanda in life, right? An opportunity where we have a diverse representative representation of people of color, particularly black people in power. And so in this moment, what do we do with it? And so when we talk about African Heritage Month, it's an opportunity for us to do two things to go back and have a moment to reflect on our rich history that so many of us are connected to in so many ways, and then also honor the people that have called now Prince George's County in the US their home, but they come from such a rich culture, and they are now part of our culture here in Prince George's County. So that's what today is about. Um, thank you all for taking the time to join us today. Thank you for all the performers that are gonna perform today. Um, and want to thank also my other colleagues that are here. So we have the vice chair, Eric Olson, uh, we have council member Adams that's joining us today, and council member Ivy, and I don't think I'm missing anyone in the room. Oh, and our former council member as always, councilmember Hawkins, thank you for coming down to join us. And now I'll pass it to your um mistress of ceremonies, councilmember Blagay and Councilmember Fisher, go ahead. Thank you all so much. I know um for many, um, you know, there has been everyone's saying, where are all these Africans coming from? As we have been um seeing an emergence of our African community showing up everywhere in their form in their gear, showing their tradition, and it is beautiful for me to see um because we've always been here. We've been here for many years, but many people say that we were never invited to the table. We were never invited to the rooms, and I made sure that as a council member that that was one of my goals is making sure that African heritage, our African community is invited to the table, is able to sit in the rooms because they are a part of our community as mentioned. They are big part of our business community. Um, so it is beautiful to celebrate African culture. And at one point, there were a few of us in the room wearing African clothes. Now we got a county executive that wears African clothes every day. So it is beautiful because it just shows the diversity of our community that we can celebrate all the heritage. And we have our brother here, Daniel Caroma.