Black History Month
A whole month dedicated to highlighting, honoring, and focusing attention on all of the achievements, contributions, and accomplishments of all Black people.
African Americans or Black people (also known sometimes as POC or People of Color) are technically considered to be 2nd class citizens and are not officially a part of U.S. History. If you look in your standard and average U.S. history textbook, you will not find a lot of information in there about people who are "darker than a paper bag". That doesn't mean, however, that African Americans have no history at all inside of the United States.
In 1915, historian Carter G. Woodson co-founded with four other people, the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, in response to the lack of information available to the public about the achievements of Black people.
In 1926, this group proclaimed the second week of February as "Negro History Week". This weeklong event eventually became officially recognized by President Gerald Ford as Black History Month in 1976. While making Black History Month an official holiday in the United States, President Ford called on the public to "seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history".
Today, only six countries celebrate Black History Month. Those countries are the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, and the Netherlands.
Black Love Day
We must love ourselves enough as a people to want to reclaim our legacy, study our history and culture... We need not be ashamed of anything--only proud of how far we've come and proud of our many contributions!
-- Ayo Handy Kendi, founder, Black Love Day
Black Love Day, or BLD, has been the 3rd nationally commemorative African American/Black holiday (wholyday) since February 13, 1993. This annual holiday was founded by Mama Ayo Handy Kendi and is all about observance, celebration, reconciliation, atonement, and 24-hour demonstration of love showing at least 5 specific acts (tenets) of love - towards the Creator, for self, for the family, within the Black community, and for the Black race. Whites show "love in action" for Blacks and inspect their own racial attitudes and behavior.
Adinkra are highly valued, hand-printed, and hand-embroidered cloths. These cloths contained symbols that were designed by the people of Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire. Adinkra cloths have been used since ancient times, way before the 1800's. Many of these symbols use radial or reflective symmetry. These symbols express deeply symbolic proverbs and other symbols relating to history, life, death, philosophy, wisdom, human behavior, and spiritual beliefs of the people. Adinkra symbols were also used extensively in logos and pottery.
The Akoma (pronounced Ah-coma), an Adinkra symbol, means "The Heart". It represents patience, tolerance, agreement, love, goodwill, fondness, understanding, faithfulness, unity, consistency, and endurance. Nya Akoma (pronounced N yah Ah-coma) is the slogan and greeting used on BLD and simply means "Get A Heart".
Juneteenth
Also Known As African American Independence Day, Juneteenth Independence Day, Freedom Day, or Emancipation Day
On January 1, 1863, as the United States approached its third year of the civil war, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation had declared that "all persons held as slaves" currently in the states engaged in rebellion against the Union would forever be free. This Emanicipation Proclamation was very limited in a lot of ways. The Emancipation Proclamation:
- Applied only to states that had formally withdrew from the United States
- Did not apply to slavery happening within the loyal Union and border states
- Spared parts of the Confederacy that had already been conquered by the Northern states
- Only provided freedom depending upon the military victory of the Unites States Union
On April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee decided to surrender his Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, marking the end of the Civil War. The U.S. Army faced the brand-new task of occupying eleven conquered Southern states in the spring during peacetime. They had to administer a process called "Reconstruction", the process in which the former rebellious states would be restored to the Union.
On June 19th, the U.S. federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas in order to take control of the state and to ensure that all of the enslaved people were freed. Juneteenth marks the end of slavery in the United States. Emancipation didn't happen overnight, especially when some slave owners didn't inform their slaves until after harvest season. However, celebrations broke out amidst the newly free Black people, and Juneteenth was born.
On June 17, 2021, President Joe Biden signed the bill, that was passed by the House (415-14) and unanimously passed by the Senate, making Juneteenth the eleventh American Federal holiday, and the first to obtain legal observance as a federal holiday since 1983 when Martin Luther King Jr. Day was designated.
Kwanzaa
Kwanzaa is a cultural, African American, and pan-African holiday celebrated December 26th thru January 1st. It was created by Dr. Maulana Karenga in 1966 as an act of cultural recovery and reconstruction, and as a way of uniting and empowering the African American community. It is based on traditional African first harvests and festivals, and is a celebration of community, culture, and family. Dr. Karenga took the name Kwanzaa from the Swahili phrase, "matunda ya kwanza", menaing first fruits.
There are seven principles of Kwanzaa, or the Nguzo Saba, that correspond with the seven days and the seven candles on the Kinara.
What Do the Kwanzaa Colors Mean
| Black |
for the people |
|
| Red |
for the blood that is shed in the struggle for freedom |
for the noble blood that unites all people of African ancestry |
| Green |
for the rich, fertile land of Africa |
hope for the future |
The seven days of Kwanzaa are as follows:
- Day 1: Umoja, meaning unity. On this day, you light the black candle. This principle means to strive for and maintain unity, onesness, and active solidarity in the family, community, nation, and race.
- Day 2: Kujichagulia, meaning self-determination. On this day, you light the black candle and the far left red candle. This principle means to find out who we are as individuals and as a community. It encourages us to define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves instead of letting and/or asking other people to do it for us.
- Day 3: Ujima, meaning collective work and responsibility. On this day, you light the black candle, and the two far left red candles. This principle means to build and maintain our community together, to take on each other's prolems, and to solve them together through active and informed togetherness on matters of common interest.
- Day 4: Ujamaa, meaning cooperative economics. On this day, you light the black candle and all three red candles. This principle means to build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses, and to profit from them as a community.
- Day 5: Nia, meaning purpose. On this day, you light the black candle, all three red candles, and the far left green candle. This principle means to make our collective vocation of building, developing, and defending our community, its culture, and our history in order to restore our people to their traditional African beauty and greatness.
- Day 6: Kuumba, meaning creativity. On this day, you light all of the candles except the far right green one. This principle means to create and do as much as we can to leave our community more vibrant, beautiful, favorable, better, profitable, and advantageous than we inherited it.
- Day 7: Imani, meaning faith. On this day, you light all of the candles. This means to honor our best traditions, and to have an enduring and profound belief with all of our heart in our people, our culture, our family, our leaders, our teachers, our elders, our community, and the integrity, justifiable, and victory of our struggle.
According to The Official Kwanzaa Website (www.officialkwanzaawebsite.org), the goal is to light the candles after the black one by moving from left to right when facing the kinara. The Official Kwanzaa website explains, "This procedure is to indicate that the people come first, then the struggle and then the hope that comes from the struggle."
My Favorite African American Holiday
Thank you for visiting my website.
We hope you enjoyed our site and found it to be really useful. Please take a moment to fill out our survery.
Choose your favorite African American holiday: