The Smooth Guide to Kwanzaa

Spawned by the Black Power movement of the 1960s, Kwanzaa was originally conceived by the scholar/activist Maulana Karenga in 1966 as a non-Eurocentric, secular alternative to Christmas. It was the first holiday created exclusively for African Americans, who would celebrate it with rituals, reflect on their past, reconnect to their African cultural identity, abandon negative selfimages and, ultimately, distance themselves from the “dominant society.” Karenga was…

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