His wedding was celebrated by Washington Post editor Joe Ritchie at the Anacostia Museum of African American History. At the ceremony in 1980, he and his wife wore African-inspired clothing, festive robes in which the two also appeared at parties. "By confessing to the continent of our ancestors, we determine who we are: Americans as well as Africans," Ritchie wrote in a post for SPIEGEL. The Ritchies gave their sons African names: Jabari and Akin.
History-conscious African Americans such as the later journalism professor Ritchie celebrate a festival that, according to the US researcher Elizabeth Pleck as "one of the most powerful inventions of black US nationalism from the sixties" applies. They celebrate Kwanzaa from December 26th to January 1st. "Mutunda ya kwanzaa" means in the East African language Kisuaheli "first fruits" - read: "Thanks for the harvest". In the Kwanzaa Festival week, friends and relatives are treated with gifts. Families light a candle daily on a seven-branched candlestick (Kinara). They sprinkle alcohol on the ground according to African custom to honor the ancestors.
A feast with seven principles
During the communal meal - preferably in African costume - the celebrating groups will speak about the seven principles of the Kwanzaa over the seven nights: Umoja (unity), Kujichagulia (self-determination), Ujima (responsibility), Ujamaa (common economy), Nia (purposefulness) , Kuumba (creativity) and Imani (faith). The motto of January 1, the seventh and last day of the feast, was defined as: wholeheartedly we believe in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders, and the victory of our just cause.
The festival was designed by Professor Ron Everett of California State University in Long Beach in 1966. The historian was a black power activist and called himself Maulana Karenga. At that time, it was common for African Americans to give up their "slave names" and adopt African or Arabic names as a sign of protest against oppression. That's what poet LeRoi Jones Amiri Baraka and boxer Cassius Clay Muhammad Ali called themselves. Clay also converted to Islam, because while Christianity was considered a religion of white origin, many people saw in the faith of the Prophet Muhammad the religion of the colored.
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African American celebration week "Kwanzaa": Black Power instead of white ChristmasDark-skinned Christians in Africa and the Diaspora repeatedly come across the images of their doctrine of faith: white angels, a white Jesus, a white god with a snow-white beard. So a black boy in a book published in London asks, "Why are not angels looking like me?" He was saddened that the heavenly beings were represented as the likeness of white children; the boy wished "An Angel Just Like Me" (the title of the book). The magazine "West Africa" praised the story: "It shows how children feel racist setback - especially at Christmas."
At this most important festival in Christendom in the United States, the catchy tune "White Christmas" is heard all the time - and African Americans do not just think about snow. "White Christmas" can also be described as "Christmas of the Whites". No wonder that black nationalists like Professor Karenga were thinking about a replacement Christmas for blacks. And so Kwanzaa created.
"Kwanzaa was deliberately put into the time of Christian Christmas," writes the Journal of Black Studies edited by Temple University in Philadelphia; The new festival was to "oppose the Pan-African idea to Christianity, which is co-responsible for colonization and slavery."
Today, the Official Kwanzaa website emphasizes that the festival is "not a religious holiday". The militant-political origin is not mentioned, but the coexistence with Christmas. "You can have your merry Christmas and a happy Kwanzaa too." America loves holidays. The citizens of the multicultural country do not lack ideas. So people invented the religiously established festivals - the Christian Christmas, the Jewish Hanukkah and the Muslim Eid al-Fitr for Ramadan - Thanksgiving, Mother's Day, Father's Day and Halloween. In addition, since 1966 Kwanzaa. "The blacks have the same right to invent shit as the whites," sneers Afro-American author Ta-Neshi Coates. The "awe-inspiring Kwanzaa" is "a fictional feast for a fictional country".
$ 100 for the Kwanzaa chandelier
Like almost every other major festival, commercialization has not stopped at Kwanzaa: traditional Kwanzaa Weeks feature traditional African clothing, dark-skinned dolls, greeting cards, art and African-inspired handicrafts. The seven-armed stand costs up to $ 100 with candles in red, black and green, the colors of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which propagated the return of all blacks to Africa at the beginning of the 20th century. After neighborhood markets flourished, in 1993 a "Kwanzaa Holiday Expo" opened its doors in the huge New York Jacobs K. Javits Convention Center.
"At Kwanzaa you have to be there," said a New York Times Pepsi Cola manager, who printed a report on The Marketing of Kwanzaa. In addition to smaller shops, major companies such as Revlon and the brewing group Arnheuser-Busch were represented at the fair. The spokesman for the Kwanzaa Expo said that the "commercialization" was in order, "but African Americans should benefit from that, not corporate America."
There is money to be made with Kwanzaa, although only a minority within the black minority celebrate the festival. Many whites learned of it only 1997, when the American post office authority brought out for the first time Kwanzaa stamps (for the 50. Anniversary 2016 followed another series). A soundtrack gave the festival of soul star Teddy Prendergrass since he released the album "Happy Kwanzaa" in 1998.
Kwanzaa is established. Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barak Obama sent greetings to the event. The newly elected Donald Trump also addressed the celebrants on December 26, 2017: "Today is the first day of a week-long festival of African tradition and culture." While families and friends celebrate the Kinara together, Melania and I send our warmest greetings to them Public holidays." Friendly words that surprised many.
However, the political developments that preceded the current boom of the festival are not only pleasing in nature: Melvin Deal of Washington DC, whose Afro Dance and Drum group has performed at more than a dozen Kwanzaa events in 2017, reports even greater demand this year - a response to the "increasingly visible white racism".