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Kwanzaa Expands as Students Grow Up With Celebration

By Marvin T. Anderson
Black College Wire

Photo credit: www.officialkwanzaawebsite.org Kwanzaa has seven basic symbols, each representing values and concepts that its creators say reflect African culture.

At several historically black colleges in the mid-Atlantic region, Kwanzaa was celebrated this year with candlelight vigils, African dancing, cultural marketplaces and charitable projects.

Kwanzaa is a celebration created in 1966 by Maulana Karenga, a professor of black studies at California State University at Long Beach, to renew African Americans' recognition of African culture. It is officially celebrated from Dec. 26 to Jan. 1, but Hampton and Howard universities and other colleges held student festivals or other events at the end of the semester.

Not all schools joined in celebrating: Students at Virginia State University, which annually held a Kwanzaa program for many years, were left without one this year and last.

"We usually have a dynamic program," said DeAndre Neal, Virginia State's assistant director of student activities. "We didn't lose focus, but we couldn't get it all in," he said, referring to the many university activities such as graduation, taking place just before the semester's end.

Norfolk State University also did not hold a Kwanzaa event.

Even though some colleges do not sponsor Kwanzaa celebrations, some experts on African American traditions say that black students' participation in Kwanzaa is increasing as more people grow up with it.

That is the view of Ayo Handy-Kendi, founder and director of the Washington-based African American Holiday Association, which holds festivities throughout the year, including Kwanzaa programs. It has recently published a DVD about celebrating Kwanzaa, available on its Web site, http://www.aaha-info.org/.

"It appears to me that there are young people who were celebrating as young children with their families who are now grown," Handy-Kendi said. "We now have a generation that is connected to Kwanzaa who are having children themselves."

Handy-Kendi was a speaker Dec. 18 at the pre-Kwanzaa program at Howard University organized by Ubiquity, a student cultural consciousness group that annually celebrates Kwanzaa. The celebration showcased a dance ensemble and vendors.

The AAHA works with university groups to emphasize the seven principles of Kwanzaa known as the Nguzo Saba: unity (Umoja), self-determination (Kujichagulia), collective work and responsibility (Ujima), cooperative economics (Ujamaa), purpose (Nia), creativity (Kuumba), and faith (Imani).

"I do believe students are very interested still and it's up to us, the older keepers of the culture, to bring this message to campus," Handy-Kendi said. "I see a very serious student interest in Kwanzaa. I don't see it decreasing, I see it increasing."

Ariel Thomas, president of Ubiquity, said her student group's Kwanzaa events help empower the black community.

"People stayed after and fellowshipped, and that's a sign that people enjoyed it," Thomas said. "This shows black people and black students that there is another way to provide, and give thanks to our community."

At Hampton University, the student organization Biggers' Circle and Hampton's university museum co-sponsored a Kwanzaa celebration Dec. 2 that included a marketplace, a speaker and a clothing drive.

"We actually had a lot of help from students. The museum staff and our adviser gave guidance," said Terryn Hall, a junior and president of Biggers' Circle, named for the late painter John Biggers . "Everybody worked together."

To attend the event, participants had to bring clothing to donate for the Maasai American Organization , which would later give the clothes to HIV-infected women in Africa to sell in their marketplace. The event also featured a speaker from that organization.

Hall did not get an official count on the amount of clothing collected, but said there was so much that the speaker could barely fit it into a van.

"I think Kwanzaa is important to black college students because it helps them reflect on black values," Hall said. "I see Kwanzaa's values in every person, but it's up to the individual person to bring them," the values, "out of themselves."

Hall said she hopes black students at her school and other campuses will join the Kwanzaa festivities.

"I would like to see more students participate," she said. "It gives me hope."

Although Virginia State students and others did not have a college-sponsored Kwanzaa event, they do not have to miss the Kwanzaa experience, said Janine Bell , director of the Richmond, Va.-based Elegba Folklore Society. The society helps university groups and others honor African American traditions and has many student volunteers.

"Celebrating Kwanzaa can be very intimate and very sacred," said Bell. "Get together in a dorm, light the candles, analyze and evaluate the principles."

For example, if a student raised a C grade to an A in a class, Bell said, celebrate the fruits of that labor and enjoy Kwanzaa with fellow students.

"I don't care if you've got a 5.3 average, you didn't get there by yourself," she said.

Marvin T. Anderson is a junior print journalism major at Hampton University.

Posted Dec. 26, 2005