Kwanzaa Celebrations Begin in Sacramento

Kwanzaa is an annual holiday that affirms African family and social values and is celebrated primarily in the United States from December 26 to January 1. The name and the celebration were devised in 1966 by Maulana Karenga, a professor of Africana studies at California State University in Long Beach and an important Afrocentric figure. Karenga borrowed the word kwanza, meaning “first,” from the Swahili phrase matunda ya kwanza, adding the seventh letter, an extra a, to make the word long enough to accommodate one letter for each of the seven children present at an early celebration. (The name Kwanzaa is not itself a Swahili word.) The concept of Kwanzaa draws on Southern African first-fruits celebrations.