“We Must Learn and Know”

This is an excerpt from a forthcoming book entitled In All Our Glory: A Comprehensive Overview of African American History.

Central to grasping and appreciating the unfolding of the African American experience in America is knowing the chronology of the master periods which shaped the lives of both blacks and America. These periods witness the glorious ages in which Africans controlled their own destiny and contributed fundamentally to the development of Europe as well as the decline of Africa, resulting in the human trafficking of Africans and the underdevelopment of Africa.

Fundamentally there are xx periods which have defined and shaped the lives of African Americans. These master periods, listed below, have profoundly fashioned social landscape of America and underpinned its political economy.

Ancient Egypt: The Dawning of Human Civilization

The origin of African American History begins in ancient Egypt.  In ancient Egypt, an African civilization, we witness the dawning of human civilization with the development of the major human disciplines- religion, philosophy, science and technology, governance, agricultural development art and music, and writing- of human civilization.  The construction of the pyramids, the introduction of medicine, the study of the cosmos, the ethical teaching of right and wrong all occur over 2000 years before the common ear began, well before rise of Greek civilization.

The Emergence of African Empires

The Western Sudanic trading empires of Ghana (5th century), the Moors (8^th century) Mali (13^th and 14th century), and Songhai (15th and 16th century) illustrate the profound achievements of Africa- production of cooper and gold mines and long-distant trade routes. The camel caravans, which entered on either side of the Sahara desert or commonly known as ports, were called the “ships of the Sahara”. Walter Rodney asserts, “In practice trans-Saharan trade was as great an achievement as crossing an ocean.”

Another empire in the long pantheon of African civilizations was the Moorish empire which invaded and conquered Spain.  It is noteworthy that the Moors were in Europe as conquerors and served as a “civilizing force,” as opposed to being enslaved by the Europeans. The Moors had a tremendously positive impact on European cultural, socio-economic and political institutions. Under Moorish rule and conquest, the cities of the south, Toledo, Córdoba, and Seville, speedily became centers of the new culture and were famed for their universities and architectural treasures. In short, the Moors’s contributions to Western Europe and especially to Spain were almost incalculable—in art and architecture, medicine and science, and learning.

European Human Trafficking and African Enslavement in America

The 16thcentury begins the period of the human trafficking of Africans, a process called by historian Walter Rodney, kidnapping, violence, and terror. Rodney states: “When one tries to measure the effect of European slave trading on the African continent, it is essential to realize that one is measuring the effect of social violence rather than trade in any normal sense of the word.” The brutal and inhumane treatment of Africans continued through the infamous “Middle Passage” with: whips, shackles, neck rings, hot irons (to mark their captive in the most personal way) and thumbscrews and rape.

The study of African enslavement in America is the most potent and useful interpretive framework for understanding the historical as well as the current condition and predicament of African Americans. To be sure, there was fierce resistance to slavery by blacks: armed revolts, runaways and escapes (most notably the Underground Railroad), sabotage, organized protest, and of course, participation in the Civil War.

Nevertheless, slavery had a devastating impact on blacks, in particular the family formation and the roles of father and husband for black males. American slavery, which defined Africans as property, not persons made no allowance for their humanity and dignity.  What study of American slavery reveals is that the black male could not perform, legally or socially, the minimum roles of husband and father. Thus, cohabitation, rather than marriage, producing children out-of- wedlock became a permanent, but adverse feature of black life, all of which can traced back to enslavement.

The Civil War and Reconstruction Freedom Struggle

The Civil War the final phase to end African American enslavement.  African Americans, Benjamin Quarles states, were “both a symbol and a participant.” The War would eventual be seen as a “new birth of freedom” and blacks would play a decisive role in bringing the war to a close with the defeat of the South. And, after the war, blacks were active agents in charting the course of their lives. The period in American history known as Reconstruction was for blacks a time of reconstructing their lives, from slavery to freedom, from slave to citizen. Moreover, Reconstruction ushered in a social revolution of mammoth proportions, giving birth to America’s first interracial democratic experience, and as W.E.B. Bois observed Reconstruction was a period of promise and disappointment: “The [African American] went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.” The Hayes-Tillman Compromise reversed the gains of Reconstruction and imposed Jim Crow laws, a racial caste system, reproducing  practices which dehumanized and subordinated blacks to whites and promoting white supremacy. The violence and brutality which grew out of the white supremacy system gave impetus and rise to the next master period-The Great Black Migration.

The Great Black Migration

One of the great untold stories of American history is the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Indeed, the mass migration of blacks to the North and West changed the cultural and social landscape of American cities. The cultural capital which blacks amassed in America’s cities fueled the first Black Awakening

The Black Awakening

Coinciding with the Great Black Migration 1920s, fifty years after the official end of African American enslavement, blacks in America began the  to come of age. This coming of age was expressed in the works of the Harlem Renaissance and the Marcus Garvey Movement. Black intellectuals and artist came together in the black capital of Black America, Harlem, to signal the emergence of a “New Negro”. The New Negro told the world of the new self-concept of the race, proclaiming that African Americans were a people deserving of respect, not a ward of society, not a creature to be helped, pitied or explained away. The New Negro could no longer be dismissed by contempt or terror. Instead, black people were insisting on their rights and would, as W.A. Domingo intimated-return violence blow by blow. This, to be sure, was the dawning of a people coming into being, jetting the docile and personality, the “minstrel man” who wore the mask which white people demanded.

The Second Black Awakening

The Second Black Awakening, 1956 through 1975, produced two of greatest social movements in the 20^th century, Civil Rights and Black Power. The Civil Rights movement expanded citizenship for all Americans, employing multiple tactics to overcome and knock down the political and social apparatus of segregation in the South- legal challenges, boycotts, protest marches, sit-in demonstrations, freedom rides, and institutional building. The Civil Rights Movement served as a model subsequent social change movement in the United States and abroad. The Black Power movement touched every aspect of American culture, and, like the “New Negro” Movement of the 1920s, signaled cultural and political  transformation of African Americans. Black people- sharecroppers, unionists, welfare and tenants rights organizers, students, intellectuals, poets, musicians and singers and politicians-grounded in the ideology of Black Power, began to organize around controlling their own lives and institutions. Its unflinching call for the promotion of black history and black studies; its Pan African impulse; its far-reaching criticism of racism at home and imperialism abroad, expanded the dialogue and parameters of the black freedom struggle, and helped pave the way for a wave of black elected officials, black studies and numerous periodicals and businesses, and

the African American holiday Kwanzaa.

The Age of Obama

The election of Barack Obama stands as a watershed event in African American and American history. Unquestionably, President Obama was the beneficiary 1960’s Civil Rights and Black Power movements which opened up the American society and the political system to people of color and women. The Age of Obama portends promise and possibility as well as confrontation and contrariness; Tea Party reactionaries and Wall Street Occupiers; obscene wealth and inequality and cascading poverty and a democratic impulse and anti-democratic push. To be sure, this will be a contested age and age which determines whether America has truly turned over a new leaf on race.

Faith/Imani: Trusting and believing with our heart and mind in ourselves, our parents, our teachers, and our leaders and our capacity as a people to make a better world

Imani Message

The Imani principle is the bedrock principle. Mary McLeod Bethune teaches us that “Without faith, nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible.” Howard Thurman tells us that: “Faith is the substance and spirit which makes “tired hearts refreshed and dead hopes stir with the nearness of life; faith is the “promise of tomorrow at the close of everyday, the triumph of life in the defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.” And, the African American National Anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing, reminds us that faith and hope are tethered together: “Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us/Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.” Our history, the anthem teaches us to keep believing even in the most hopeless moments: Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod/Felt in the days when hope unborn had died/Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet/ Come to the place for which our fathers sighed. Moreover, Peter J Gomes says that faith and hope gives us:

The greatest sense of the whole to the believer, who in this world can see only in part, as in a distorted mirror of the sort found in carnival fun houses, in which what you see is real but not really real, for all the proportions are wrong. The way to see things whole, the way to live wholly and not in part, the way for past and present and future to make some semblance of sense for those who have to keep these dimensions together, is through the more excellent way and the higher gifts of faith and hope.”

And finally, a poignant message of Life Every Voice and Sing is that the road to victory is fraught with difficulty, doubt, and disappointment, but in the end, the faithful will prevail: God of our weary years, God of our silent tears/ Thou Who hast brought us thus far on the way/ Thou Who hast by Thy might, led us into the light/ Keep us forever in the path, we pray/ Facing the rising sun of our new day begun/ Let us march on till victory is won.

Imani Day Checklist

ü     Ingathering activity, around a meal or designated time

ü     Read African/American proverbs, folktales, poems, or recite family story related to Imani (optional)

ü     Highlight the Kwanzaa Symbol Candles/ Mishuuma Saba

ü     Reflect on the  Imani commitment for the current and coming year

ü     Family Feast

ü     Pour Libation (optional)

ü     Candle lighting

ü     Make Imani commitment

ü     Take picture/record your commitments or Kwanzaa activities (optional)

ü     Using the Swahili greeting to greet each other. Harbari Gani (What’s the News) Response: Imani

ü     Plan and/or do an Imani activity.

Candle Lighting Activity

Candle Lighting: On the seventh day of Kwanzaa the family lights the Green candle. This candle is symbolic of the effort. The placement and order of the Kwanzaa candles teach and reinforce valuable lessons for the family. The Green candle is symbolic of effort, discipline and work.

Kwanzaa Journal Entry

What was my 2011 Kwanzaa Commitment: Completed, Partially Completed, Still in Progress

What are my 2012 Kwanzaa commitments?

By what means or method will I employ to achieve my commitments?

Review Kwanzaa commitments and make changes if necessary

Post on Facebook (optional)

Faith/Imani: Trusting and believing with our heart and mind in ourselves, our parents, our teachers, and our leaders and our capacity as a people to make a better world

Imani Message

The Imani principle is the bedrock principle. Mary McLeod Bethune teaches us that “Without faith, nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible.” Howard Thurman tells us that: “Faith is the substance and spirit which makes “tired hearts refreshed and dead hopes stir with the nearness of life; faith is the “promise of tomorrow at the close of everyday, the triumph of life in the defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.” And, the African American National Anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing, reminds us that faith and hope are tethered together: “Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us/Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.” Our history, the anthem teaches us to keep believing even in the most hopeless moments: Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod/Felt in the days when hope unborn had died/Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet/ Come to the place for which our fathers sighed. Moreover, Peter J Gomes says that faith and hope gives us:

The greatest sense of the whole to the believer, who in this world can see only in part, as in a distorted mirror of the sort found in carnival fun houses, in which what you see is real but not really real, for all the proportions are wrong. The way to see things whole, the way to live wholly and not in part, the way for past and present and future to make some semblance of sense for those who have to keep these dimensions together, is through the more excellent way and the higher gifts of faith and hope.”

And finally, a poignant message of Life Every Voice and Sing is that the road to victory is fraught with difficulty, doubt, and disappointment, but in the end, the faithful will prevail: God of our weary years, God of our silent tears/ Thou Who hast brought us thus far on the way/ Thou Who hast by Thy might, led us into the light/ Keep us forever in the path, we pray/ Facing the rising sun of our new day begun/ Let us march on till victory is won.  Let us keep the faith in our families, our parents, and our people.

Imani Day Checklist

ü     Ingathering activity, around a meal or designated time

ü     Read African/American proverbs, folktales, poems, or recite family story related to Imani (optional)

ü     Highlight the Kwanzaa Symbol Candles/ Mishuuma Saba

ü     Reflect on the  Imani commitment for the current and coming year

ü     Family Feast

ü     Pour Libation (optional)

ü     Candle lighting

ü     Make Imani commitment

ü     Take picture/record your commitments or Kwanzaa activities (optional)

ü     Using the Swahili greeting to greet each other. Harbari Gani (What’s the News) Response: Imani

ü     Plan and/or do an Imani activity.

Candle Lighting Activity

Candle Lighting: On the seventh day of Kwanzaa the family lights the Green candle. This candle is symbolic of the effort. The placement and order of the Kwanzaa candles teach and reinforce valuable lessons for the family. The Green candle is symbolic of effort, discipline and work.

Kwanzaa Journal Entry

What was my 2011 Kwanzaa Commitment: Completed, Partially Completed, Still in Progress

What are my 2012 Kwanzaa commitments?

By what means or method will I employ to achieve my commitments?

Post on Facebook (optional)

Creativity/Kuumba: Working diligently to continuously enhance our families, neighborhoods and people

Kuumba Message

The Kuumba principle is teaches that both children and adults should strive for continuous improvement. This principle is central and essential to the restoration of academic excellence for African American youth.  Rediscovering an achievement ethic in education and professional endeavors must be a priority for 2012. Too many of our youth are complacent with just getting by, believing that the difficult subjects and challenging matters are for other people. Similarly, adults suffer the same diminished self-concept, and all the while expect youth to perform at an exceptional level. Exceptional performing youth require exceptional performing adults and parents. Thus, we should all strive to leave our relationships- formal and informal unions- families, neighborhoods, and people in an improved state.

Kuumba Day Checklist

ü     Ingathering activity, around a meal or designated time

ü     Read African/American proverbs, folktales, poems, or recite family story related to Kuumba (optional)

ü     Highlight the Kwanzaa Symbol Zawadi/Gifts

ü     Reflect on the  Kuumba commitment for the current and coming year

ü     Family Feast

ü     Pour Libation (optional)

ü     Candle lighting

ü     Make Kuumba commitment

ü     Take picture/record your commitments or Kwanzaa activities (optional)

ü     Using the Swahili greeting to greet each other. Harbari Gani (What’s the News) Response: Kuumba

ü     Plan and/or do a collective work and responsibility activity.

Candle Lighting Activity

Candle Lighting: On the second day of Kwanzaa the family lights the red candle. This candle is symbolic of the effort. The placement and order of the Kwanzaa candles teach and reinforce valuable lessons for the family. The red candle is symbolic of effort, discipline and work.

Kwanzaa Journal Entry

What was my 2011 Kwanzaa Commitment: Completed, Partially Completed, Still in Progress

What are my 2012 Kwanzaa commitments?

By what means or method will I employ to achieve my commitments?

Post on Facebook (optional)

Purpose/Nia: Fulfilling our duty and obligation to contribute to  the high and morally serious purpose of nation-building, i.e. , the quest to recover and restore our people to their traditional greatness

Nia Message

Charles Hamilton, the intellectual giant who built from scratch the intellectual and framework and the legal strategy and infrastructure and which led to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision by the Supreme Court, and Dunbar High School in Washington D.C. are two compelling narratives of Nia:

Charles Hamilton

Howard University was the nation’s premier school for black attorneys. Yet, when Mordecai Johnson, first black president of Howard University, appointed Charles Hamilton Dean of Howard’s Law School, it lacked accreditation and was called by the wealthiest black residents of Washington D.C “a dummy’s retreat.” Howard’s accreditation only marked beginning of the work ahead. Armed with the schools hard-earned credentials, he directed the law school to redouble its efforts to graduate lawyers fit to effects social gains. Houston did not demand from his students and faculty all that they could give; he exacted

Dunbar High School

Dunbar High School, located in Washington D.C. represents one of the most inspiring and compelling models of African American educational excellence- Dunbar was once the pride of the race, out performing in city-wide examination students attending the high school for whites. Within the walls of Dunbar from 1870 to 1954 (eighty-four years) there was teaching of only black children by only black teachers. There was a respect for learning and an expectation of superiority based on knowledge and pride emanating from teachers and instilled into students that made Dunbar a special educational environment.

Nia Day Checklist

ü     Ingathering activity, around a meal or designated time

ü     Read African/American proverbs, folktales, poems, or recite family story related to nation building (optional)

ü     Highlight the Kwanzaa Symbol Corn/Muhindi

ü     Reflect on the  Cooperative Economics commitment for the current and coming year

ü     Family Feast

ü     Pour Libation (optional)

ü     Candle lighting

ü     Make Nia commitment

ü     Take picture/record your commitments or Kwanzaa activities (optional)

ü     Using the Swahili greeting to greet each other. Harbari Gani (What’s the News) Response: Nia

ü     Plan and/or do a collective work and responsibility activity.

Candle Lighting Activity

Candle Lighting: On the second day of Kwanzaa the family lights the green candle. This candle is symbolic of the effort. The placement and order of the Kwanzaa candles teach and reinforce valuable lessons for the family. The green candle is symbolic of effort, discipline and work. The lesson here is straightforward: competence, excellence, and greatness are achieved through children and youth who put forth the right effort (work and study) will achieve success in their grades and school performance. The same applies to adults.

Kwanzaa Journal Entry

What was my 2011 Kwanzaa Commitment: Completed, Partially Completed, Still in Progress

What are my 2012 Kwanzaa commitments?

By what means or method will I employ to achieve my commitments?

Post on Facebook (optional)

Cooperative Economics/Ujamaa: Sharing and pooling our financial resources and goods and services for the common benefit of family and community participants with the goal of building and sustaining cooperative economic enterprises

Ujamaa/Cooperative Economics Message 

The practice of mutual aid, Cooperative Economics, by traditional Africans gave recognition and worth to members of the community. This practice grew out of their shared understanding and philosophical insight of the essential dependency of humans as exemplified in their cooperative mode of agricultural production.

Moreover, in traditional African societies the mode of agriculture production was based on smallholdings worked by individual farmers and their households. In such a mode of production, recurrent stages were easily foreseeable at which the resources of any one farmer would be insufficient to accomplish with dispatch the necessary task for agricultural production. In such moments, all that was necessary was for the household in the community to send word to the neighbors and the people would assembly with their own implements of work and together to help (Cooperative Economics) get the job done in full and warranted conviction that when their turn came the same gesture would be returned in exactly the same spirit. This practice, especially in light of the today’s financial uncertainty is a viable financial strategy to leverage family and community resources.

Cooperative Economics Day Checklist

ü     Ingathering activity, around a meal or designated time

ü     Read African/American proverbs, folktales, poems, or recite family story (optional)

ü     Highlight the Kwanzaa Symbol Mazao/Crops

ü     Reflect on the  Cooperative Economics commitment for the current and coming year

ü     Family Feast

ü     Pour Libation (optional)

ü     Candle lighting

ü     Make Cooperative Economics commitment

ü     Take picture/record your commitments or Kwanzaa activities (optional)

ü     Using the Swahili greeting to greet each other. Harbari Gani (What’s the News) Response: Ujamaa

ü     Plan and/or do a collective work and responsibility activity.

Candle Lighting Activity

Candle Lighting: On the second day of Kwanzaa the family lights the red candle. This candle is symbolic of the effort. The placement and order of the Kwanzaa candles teach and reinforce valuable lessons for the family. The red candle is symbolic of effort, discipline and work. The lesson here is straightforward: competence, excellence, and greatness are achieved through children and youth who put forth the right effort (work and study) will achieve success in their grades and school performance. The same applies to adults.

Kwanzaa Journal Entry

What was my 2011 Kwanzaa Commitment: Completed /  Partially Completed /  Still in Progress

What are my 2012 Kwanzaa commitments?

By what means or method will I employ to achieve my commitments?

Post on Facebook (optional)

Collective Work and Responsibility/Ujima: Investing  collectively in our family’s and community’s well-being, and working in   mutual beneficial way to create the best conditions and possibilities of life for everyone

Ujima/Collective Work & Responsibility Message

Collective work and responsibility is a powerful force in the construction of family and community, and in healthy development of children. This principle instructs that we are all responsible for the welfare and success of each other. All adults, for example, are responsible for the welfare of the community and for the nurturing and development of children. Similarly, all adults are responsible and accountable for the success and failure of neighborhood schools and the safety of the community. Neighborhood safety is most definitively grounded in a network of caring adults who monitor the behavior and skills acquisition, i.e., education of children in the neighborhood. Hence, as indicated above, collective work and responsibility is a powerful and transformative value, which if observed by critical mass of neighborhood residents, would have the effect of raising our neighborhoods to a level capable of producing persons of moral, academic, and professional excellence.

Collective Work and Responsibility Day Checklist

Collective Work and Responsibility Day Checklist

ü     Ingathering activity, around a meal or designated time

ü     Read African/American proverbs, folktales, poems, or recite family story (optional)

ü     Highlight the Kwanzaa Symbol Kinara/Candleholder

ü     Reflect on the  Collective Work and Responsibility commitment for the current and coming year

ü     Family Feast

ü     Pour Libation (optional) for deceased parents love ones, significant others, heroes and heroines, all of those whose sacrifice make it possible for us to enjoy the freedom and fruits of our labor

ü     Candle lighting

ü     Make Collective Work and Responsibility commitment

ü     Take picture/record your commitments or Kwanzaa activities (optional)

ü     Using the Swahili greeting to greet each other. Harbari Gani (What’s the News) Response: Ujima

ü     Plan and/or do a collective work and responsibility activity.

ü     Make Collective Work and Responsibility commitment

ü     Take picture/record your commitments or Kwanzaa activities (optional)

ü     Using the Swahili greeting to greet each other. Harbari Gani (What’s the News) Response: Ujima

ü     Plan and/or do a collective work and responsibility activity.

Candle Lighting Activity 

Candle Lighting: On the second day of Kwanzaa the family lights the green candle. This candle is symbolic of the effort. The placement and order of the Kwanzaa candles teach and reinforce valuable lessons for the family. The green candle is symbolic of the prosperity of achieved success of the family, school or community. The lesson here is straightforward: children and youth who put forth the right effort (work and study) will achieve success in their grades and school performance. The same applies to adults.

Kwanzaa Journal Entry

What was my 2011 Kwanzaa Commitment: 1) Completed,2) Partially Completed, 3) Still in Progress

What are my 2012 Kwanzaa commitments?

By what means or method will I employ to achieve my commitments?

Post on Facebook (optional)

Self-Determination/Kujichagulia Defining and shaping our own interests, priorities, and image, and grounding our thoughts, practices, rituals, and celebrations in our own history and culture

Kujichgulia/Self-Determination Message

The practice of kujichagulia/Self-determination affirms the right and responsibility of African Americans to think, to speak, and to act from their own cultural framework. By doing this, blacks make a contribution to the whole of humanity and thus are confirmed in their human worth. Blacks would do well to remember Mary M. Bethune instruction: “We as blacks must recognized that we are the custodians as well as heirs of a great civilization. We have given something to the world as a race and for this we are proud and fully conscious of our place in the total picture of mankind’s development.”

Kujichgulia/Self-Determination Day Checklist

ü     Highlight the Kwanzaa Symbol Mkeka/Mat

ü     Reflect on the Kujichagulia/Self-Determination commitment for the current and coming year

ü     Family Feast

ü     Pour Libation (optional) for deceased parents love ones, significant others, heroes and heroines, all of those whose sacrifice make it possible for us to enjoy the freedom and fruits of our labor

ü     Candle lighting

ü     Kujichagulia/Self-Determination Commitment

ü     Take picture/record your commitments or Kwanzaa activities (optional)

ü     Using the Swahili greeting to greet each other. Harbari Gani (What’s the News) Response: Kujichagulia

ü     Discuss a major event, milestone, artist/musician , movie, in black history

ü     Read African/American proverbs, folktales, poems

ü     Decorate or discuss plans for decorating with an African décor

Candle Lighting Activity

Candle Lighting: On the second day of Kwanzaa the family lights the red candle. This candle is symbolic of the effort. The placement and order of the Kwanzaa candles teach and reinforce valuable lessons for the family. The red candle is symbolic of the effort a person, family, school or community makes. The lesson is that we light the red candle to reinforce the value of work and effort.  Frederick Douglass reminds us that “If there is no struggle there is no progress.”

Kwanzaa Journal Entry

What was my 2011 Kwanzaa Commitment: Complete, Partially complete, Still in Progress

What are my 2012 Kwanzaa commitments?

By what means or method will I employ to achieve my commitments?

]]> http://kwanzaaguide.com/2011/12/kwanzaa-2011-kujichaguliaself-determination-day-december-27th/feed/ 0 http://kwanzaaguide.com/2011/12/kwanzaa-2011-umojaunity-day-december-26-2011-2/ http://kwanzaaguide.com/2011/12/kwanzaa-2011-umojaunity-day-december-26-2011-2/#comments Sun, 25 Dec 2011 22:33:30 +0000 jimara10 http://kwanzaaguide.com/?p=2600 Happy Kwanzaa

Unity/Umoja   Building and fostering harmonious, positive, and warm, relationships and attachments in the family, school, neighborhood, and large national community

Unity Day Message

On this the first day of Kwanzaa, we come together to celebrate the joy of living together as family. The focus of this first day of Kwanzaa is the celebration of the start of Kwanzaa, with a focus on celebrating unity, i.e., the harmonizing relationships in the family. The African proverb says, “The success or ruin of a people begins in the family.” Hence, we want to engage in practices which make our families stronger and more nurturing and productive. Unity Day places stress on emotional and social attachment of family members, especially children. Let us ensure that children have the emotional security, and are attached to a network of caring and nurturing adults; let men and women, husbands and wives, renew their love and form even greater attachments; let families be the watchword for 2012, and let children playing in safe and secure environment be common place.

Unity Day Checklist

ü     Start with unity day activities at the onset of the day (as simple as greeting everyone- Happy Kwanzaa

ü     Ingathering activity, around a meal or designated time

ü     Reflect on Kwanzaa commitments for the current and coming year

ü     Family Feast

ü     Pour Libation (optional) for deceased parents love ones, significant others, heroes and heroines, all of those whose sacrifice make it possible for us to enjoy the freedom and fruits of our labor

ü     Unity Cup Activity

ü     Candle lighting

ü     Unity Commitment

ü     Take picture/record your commitments or Kwanzaa activities (optional)

Candle Lighting Activity

Candle Lighting: On the first day of Kwanzaa the family lights the black candle. This candle is symbolic of the black people. The placement and order of the Kwanzaa candles teach and reinforce valuable lessons for the family. The black candle is symbolic of the people. The lesson is that we light the black candle first to reinforce the value and priority we place on our lives, beginning with our family members.  The African proverb says, “The success or ruin of a people begins in the family.”

Kwanzaa Journal Entry

What was my 2011 Kwanzaa Commitment: Complete, partially complete, Still in Progress

What are my 2012 Kwanzaa commitments?

By what means or method will I employ to achieve my commitments?

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First, children of all ages should help to set-up the Kwanzaa Set. This is instructive for children in learning experientially the meaning and values of the Kwanzaa symbols and principles. This is an opportunity for parents or caregivers to explain the meaning, symbols, and principles of Kwanzaa, and then in turn, have children explain in their own words their thoughts on Kwanzaa.

Second, have children participate in planning the daily Kwanzaa activities (See Kwanzaa DVD). This will ensure that they have a vested interest in the celebration. Make sure, however, that the planned activities are family-centered.

Third, have children plan the meals for each day of Kwanzaa. As discussed in the Kwanzaa DVD, there are no set, prescribed or mandated foods for Kwanzaa. Family may eat out or prepare meals at home.

Fourth, and most important, each day of Kwanzaa spend time praising children for their efforts and practice of the 7 Principle of Kwanzaa. Give children credit for trying. Link their efforts to the instructive lessons of the Kwanzaa candle color scheme. So that the lesson we want to generalize is that effort, hard work, and stick-to-it-ness (red candle) will lead to achieved success.

Fifth, as instructed in our Kwanzaa DVD, link gift giving with Kwanzaa commitments. Remember to take a strength-based approach and concentrate on what has been achieved (a little progress or success is better than none). Again, lavish praise on children for their accomplishments. Too, discuss how their accomplishments helped to strengthen the family.

Sixth, use narrative, story-telling, or to highlight your family discussion or to introduce a symbol or principle. For example, if a child experienced ups and downs with their commitments, you might start with the African proverb: To stumble is not to fall, but to go forward faster.” Or, select a short story or even a vignette from a movie or TV program to discuss or highlight your point.

Finally, make the celebration enjoyable and do special activities (this does not have to be expensive). The Kwanzaa celebration is joyous occasion where we appreciate each other for who we are and not for what we have.

Happy Kwanzaa