Talkers were — and still are — intrigued by the choice of venue for the event. We’re just not quite sure what that choice means.

If it means anything at all.

As the funk group Cameo belted out Word Up! and its other decades-old hits Saturday evening, the largely African-American crowd danced on ground that was once a Colonial plantation, and in the shadow of replicas of cabins that were home to slaves owned by the Davidson family in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Rural Hill was one of 11 sites for the traveling Soul Food Festival this summer, which in previous years set up in downtown Charlotte, an urban setting like most stops on the tour. Talkers don’t know how many of the folks who endured the miles-long traffic jam along Beatties Ford Road to get to the event knew anything at all about the history of the place.

But for those who did know Rural Hill’s unquestionable tie to slavery, how could they still choose to attend?

Maybe it was the collective apathy of a generation with little understanding of, or interest in, the experiences of those who went before them.

Or maybe the blood and sweat which poured from their ancestors and into the soil at Rural Hill made it ground on which it made perfect sense to celebrate.

Or it could be that maybe, just maybe, we all are beginning to reach the point at which we can separate ourselves from the actions of the past without forgetting them or denying their role in making us who we are.