The sixth annual Soul of Second Street Festival and history conference has fallen victim to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Earlier this week, one of the festival organizers Michael Hughes said he decided to pull the plug on this year’s festival which had been scheduled for early August. “I tossed and turned for several weeks,” while he was making the decision on whether or not to try to keep the festival up and running.

“But we didn’t know where we’re going to be with the virus,” Hughes said. There is no guarantee that the social distancing restrictions would be lifted even in late summer, he said. Plus with so many businesses being closed it was going to be “too hard to pull together,” and be able to raise money to sponsor the Soul of Second festival, Hughes said. “With this pandemic, I think we’d be fighting a losing battle.”

However, he has hopes that maybe in the fall “We can get together and have a little celebration. It’s a wait and see type of thing.”

He added, “We’re looking toward 2021. We’ll bring it back in ’21.”