December 26th in 1908, John Arthur Jack Johnson (March 31, 1878 – June 10, 1946), nicknamed the Galveston Giant, becomes first Black Heavyweight Champion and reign until 1915. This was during the height of the Jim Crow era. Johnson was faced with much controversy when he was charged with violating the Mann Act in 1912, even though there was an obvious lack of evidence and the charge was largely racially based. In a documentary about his life, Ken Burns notes that for more than thirteen years, Jack Johnson was the most famous and the most notorious African-American on Earth. ___________________________ in 1966, Kwanzaa was first celebrated. Kwanzaa is a week-long celebration held in the United States and also celebrated in the Western African Diaspora in other nations of the Americas. The celebration honors African heritage in African-American culture, and is observed from December 26 to January 1, culminating in a feast and gift-giving. Maulana Karenga created Kwanzaa in 1965 as the first specifically African-American holiday.According to Karenga, the name Kwanzaa derives from the Swahili phrase matunda ya kwanza, meaning first fruits of the harvest.[citation needed] The choice of Swahili, an East African language, reflects its status as a symbol of Pan-Africanism, especially in the 1960s, although most East African nations were not involved in the Atlantic slave trade that brought African people to America. Kwanzaa is a celebration that has its roots in the black nationalist movement of the 1960s, and was established as a means to help African Americans reconnect with their African cultural and historical heritage by uniting in meditation and study of African traditions and Nguzo Saba, the seven principles of African Heritage which Karenga said is a communitarian African philosophy. Kwanzaa celebrates what its founder called the seven principles of Kwanzaa, or Nguzo Saba (originally Nguzu Saba—the seven principles of African Heritage), which Karenga said is a communitarian African philosophy, consisting of what Karenga called the best of African thought and practice in constant exchange with the world. These seven principles comprise *Kawaida, a Swahili term for tradition and reason. Each of the seven days of Kwanzaa is dedicated to one of the following principles, as follows: • Umoja (Unity): To strive for and to maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race. • Kujichagulia (Self-Determination): To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, 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. __________________________ 1st Day of Kwanzaa celebrating the principle of UMOJA (Unity): To strive for and to maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race.
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 12:43:00 +0000
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