Kwanzaa festival stresses family

Morgan State event highlights holiday and all that it represents

Ashley Cooper says her daughters’ elementary schools stress the importance of attending college one day, but that’s far from the only positive long-term message she wants the girls to soak in.

The Baltimore mother wants Ky’anah Bishop, 11, and Kymah’ni Burrell, 7, to grow up valuing their own cultural heritage, curious about the world around them and confident in their creativity — all of which she says explains why she brought them Saturday to the Kwanzaa African-American Cultural Celebration at Morgan State University.

Cooper, her mother, Gwendolyn, and the two girls worked on crafts as they watched a succession of dancers, vocalists and speakers take to a stage and celebrate values considered central to the African-American holiday, including unity, self-determination and faith.

“With all the negativity that’s going on, this celebration is just such a positive influence,” Cooper said. “It’s a way of exposing the girls to our heritage. And they get to experience a college campus and see what college kids are like.”

The family was among the estimated 1,800 people who attended the free five-hour celebration in the university’s student center. It was the 26th time Morgan State has sponsored the event.

Established in 1966 by Maulana Karenga, a Maryland-born activist and leader in the Black Panther movement who eventually became a university professor, Kwanzaa is a seven-day celebration founded to remind Americans of African descent of the wisdom and beauty of the heritage from which they come.

As conceived by Karenga, the holiday — which begins on the day after Christmas and ends on New Year’s Day — commemorates

a set of seven principles rooted in African cultural history, including collective responsibility purpose self-determination creativity

and faith Recent research has shown that between 500,000 and 2 million Americans celebrate Kwanzaa each year, taking part in activities that range from the lighting of seven ceremonial candles and the use of fabrics featuring the thematic colors of green, black, and red, to displaying African art and exchanging gifts.

The purpose, says Charles Duggar, is to pass on to kids the sense of community, family, purpose and clarity that allowed previous generations of Africans to thrive — and has encouraged African-Americans to endure in the United States and elsewhere in the face of slavery, bigotry and hardship

Duggar began the festivities when he stood before the crowd and asked for a volunteer to light the first of the festival’s seven candles.

Ky’anah and Kymah’ni worked with their mother and grandmother painting ceramic African-themed masks, as a disc jockey on a nearby stage played African and Caribbean music.

Ky’anah paused, looked up from the project, and sounded every bit like a young lady taking in what her elders were trying to convey.

“There’s a lot of creativity here,” she said. “There’s a lot you can learn from Kwanzaa. And it’s fun.”