Thanks to our partner, Lexington Public Library (which is part of the Davidson County Public Library System), we have added a 24th Lexington Barbecue Festival poster to our collection! This poster is for the 38th annual Barbecue Festival held on October 22, 2022.

The festival was created out of a conversation in 1983 where Joe Sink, Jr., publisher of The Dispatch, discussed his love of festivals with BB&T officials. Together, Sink and BB&T hired Kay Saintsing, a local organization developer and manager, that completed a study of the feasibility of a new community event. After completing her research, Saintsing provided Sink and BB&T with recommendations that led to the creation of a new city festival.

Held in Lexington, North Carolina on October 27, 1984, Saintsing and her Saintsing Management Services staff (now Preferred Events) produced the city’s first Barbecue Festival. Its first year, the festival had approximately 30,000 people in attendance and 3,000 pounds of barbecue cooked. Ten years later, in 1994, the crowd was over three times as large with over 100,000 attendees and 11,000 pounds of barbecue cooked. In 2022, the festival had a record-breaking attendance of over 200,000 people. The festival continues to be produced by Saingsting’s company, which is now run by her daughter Stephanie, and held annually in Uptown Lexington on one of the last two Saturdays in October.

Information on the history of the festival was found on the Festival’s website here at this link.

To view more Lexington Barbecue Festival posters on DigitalNC, please click the link here.

To learn more about the Lexington Library and Davidson County Public Library System, please visit their website here.

To browse more North Carolina memorabilia, please visit the collection on our website here.