With Kwanzaa approaching its 50th anniversary, the cultural event filled New Covenant Church Sunday night for its third night celebrating Ujima, Collective Work and & Responsibility. Kwanzaa has gathered a lot of steam over the years since it was started locally a quarter of a century ago. After using several permanent sites, the sponsoring committee decided this year to move each day around the city.
Monday night's event is in the Frank E. Merriweather Library, which is also where founder Maulana Karenga visits Tuesday to talk about the anniversary.
Chairman Sam Radford says the idea of collective responsibility is even more important in this time of street violence in the city.
"It's really about our responsibility to our youth and with all things we see are going on with youth, particularly in the last couple of weeks here in Buffalo. It's really, really important that we get a message to our youth about the importance of preparing for a future, being here for a future, making a community better than we find it," said Radford.
African-American historian Eva Doyle says Kwanzaa is important in persuading young people to pay attention to their history and they need to pay attention to the cultural values which let their ancestors survive slavery and Jim Crow.
