Large Crowd Turns Out for Kwanzaa Event in Buffalo

The Buffalo KWANZAA Organization hosted an event to commemorate the 3rd night of Kwanzaa, UJIMA - Collective Work and Responsibility, and a large crowd turned out to participate.

Get our free mobile app

More than 150 people turned out to Frank E. Merriweather Library in Buffalo to honor UJIMA on the 3rd day of Kwanzaa.

Kwanzaa is the annual celebration of black or African-American culture that is celebrated from December 26 to January 1. It was created by Maulana Karenga in 1966 and is based upon some festival traditions from various parts of Africa.

During the seven days of Kwanzaa, there is a separate principle that is honored each day

• Umoja (Unity): To strive for and to maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race.
• Kujichagulia (Self-determination): To define and name ourselves, as well as to create and speak for ourselves.
• Ujima (Collective work and responsibility): To build and maintain our community together and make our brothers' and sisters' problems our problems and to solve them together.
• Ujamaa (Cooperative economics): To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together.
• Nia (Purpose): To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
• Kuumba (Creativity): To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
• Imani (Faith): To believe with all our hearts in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders, and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.

The roots of Kwanzaa, then, are in ancient and ongoing continental African first-fruits or first-harvest celebrations. They give Kwanzaa its model and shared values and practices, and its historical groundedness. Rooted in this ancient history and culture, Kwanzaa develops as a flourishing branch of the African cultural tree. It emerges in the context of African American life and struggle as a recreated and expanded ancient tradition. Thus, it bears special characteristics and meaning for African American people. But it is not only an African American holiday but also a Pan-African one. For it draws from the cultures of various African peoples, and is celebrated by millions of Africans throughout the world African community. Moreover, these various African peoples celebrate Kwanzaa because it speaks not only to African Americans in a special way, but also to Africans as a whole, in its stress on history, values, family, community and culture.
-Official Kwanzaa Website

The event on Tuesday, December 28, 2021, also featured a panel discussion on Black Women & Political Power with India Walton, Crystal Peoples-Stokes, Betty Jean Grant, and Sharon Belton-Cottman as panelists.

There are daily events scheduled through January 1, 2022. You can find out more information here on the Buffalo Kwanzaa Facebook page.