{"id":7154,"date":"2023-01-05T15:58:27","date_gmt":"2023-01-05T15:58:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/?p=7154"},"modified":"2023-01-05T15:58:48","modified_gmt":"2023-01-05T15:58:48","slug":"celebrating-kwanzaa-at-the-doug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/05\/celebrating-kwanzaa-at-the-doug\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating Kwanzaa at the Doug"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Oscar Shaheer starts the Lighting of the Candles ceremony<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Truth Staff<\/em><\/p>\n

The community celebrated Kwanzaa last week at the Frederick Douglass Community Association, continuing a local tradition begun here in Toledo by Diane Gordon\u2019s family in their home in 1967.<\/p>\n

The Toledo Kwanzaa House (TKH), the local chapter of \u201cOhio Celebrates Kwanzaa,\u201d hosted its first collaboration in 2020 via zoom joining Akron, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dayton, Kent and Youngstown.<\/p>\n

The celebration last week at the FDCA began every night at 6:00 p.m. after an hour of mingling and sampling the wares of the local vendors.<\/p>\n

Kwanzaa was founded in Los Angeles in 1966 in the wake of the anger sparked by police actions triggering the Watts Rebellion of 1965. During the week of Kwanzaa, December 26 to January 1, families come together to honor the ancestors and to celebrate African and African American culture. Each day a candle is lit to highlight the principle of the day. The seven principles of Kwanzaa are: Umoja (unity) \u2013 maintaining unity as a family, community and race of people; Kujichagulia (self-determination) \u2013 defining, naming, creating and speaking for ourselves; Ujima (collective work and responsibility) \u2013 building and maintaining our community solving problems together; Ujamaa (cooperative economics ) \u2013 building and maintaining retail stores and other businesses and to profit from these ventures; Nia (purpose) \u2013 working collectively to build communities that will restore the greatness of African American people; Kuumba (creativity) \u2013 finding new, innovative ways to live; Imani (faith) \u2013 faith in community, belief in ourselves, our parent, our teachers, our leaders.<\/p>\n

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Oscar Shaheer and Diane Gordon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The nightly ceremonies at the Doug featured seven different nightly hosts: Washington Muhammad; Rahwae Shuman; Diane Gordon, Oscar Shaheer; Reverend Davis, Elsie Harbour and Donald Lynn.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Oscar Shaheer, owner of Your Community Market on Nebraska, led the discussion about that night\u2019s principle, Ujamaa (collective economics), and opened his address by stressing the need to look inward as a group and rely upon each other within that group.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has something to do with our culture,\u201d said Shaheer of Kwanzaa. \u201cIt\u2019s about us; it\u2019s about the way we express ourselves about ourselves; it\u2019s about unity \u2013 having self-determination, having cooperative work, having cooperative economics, having purpose, having creativity.<\/p>\n

Shaheer asked his audience to \u201cwork together to build and strengthen our community\u201d by focusing on those elements of a successful society: First, family; second, a good strong spiritual base; third a good education and fourth, business.<\/p>\n

Shaheer repeatedly emphasized the need for African Americans to rely upon themselves given the treatment they had been exposed to over the centuries.<\/p>\n

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Singing the Black National Anthem<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWhen you mistreat a people and do not give justice, don\u2019t think you will get away with it,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The nightly Kwanzaa ceremonies included music and drumming to start, followed by the recognition of elders, a libation, a lightning of the candles reflecting each night of the celebration, an explanation of that day\u2019s principle, a speaker and value statement.<\/p>\n

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