PODCAST NOTES
Welcome to tellers of the untold I’m Vanessa, I am your host again today.
And I’m back for the next week for this week. Hope you guys had a wonderful holiday a safe and healthy one. I’m blessed. And I’m thankful to God for every day.
We’re here today, though, and last week I talked about Christmas and how it relates to our heritage, and black history, and so forth. But today I’m going to speak on Kwanzaa. Some of you are celebrating Kwanzaa. But many of you are not alone. Some of you have no idea what Kwanzaa is. Interesting enough. Once I dug and did some research, I found out some fascinating information about Kwanzaa. So if you’re not familiar Kwanzaa is a holiday that’s celebrated among black Americans. It’s not a holiday that is celebrated outside of the United States, people in Africa, do you have no idea what Kwanzaa actually is? So what happened was in 1966, this author and activist who was involved in the Black Panther movement in the 1960s, and 70s, will he founded Kwanzaa, his name is,
excuse me, I’m
sorry if I pronounced this incorrectly, but, okay. But his goal was to create the first black holiday. So he said he wanted to, and I’m gonna quote this, he said, he wanted to, quote, give blacks an alternative to an existing holiday to allow blacks to celebrate themselves and history, rather than simply intimidate the practice of the dominant society. I’m gonna give you and this is something from my blog, and you guys can check it out. But I’m gonna really be talking about five unknown facts about Kwanzaa. But just to give you some actual facts that you probably know and I, and I definitely want to mention to you that the name Kwanzaa actually comes from the phrase of Swahili and I actually took Swahili in college. I know, I know. It’s crazy, but I did. So and he, Swahili Kido go. So it came from Swahili Kwanzaa, which in it came from the origin of mon,
mon today.yat covanta and that’s how that translate as first fruits of the harvest quality is actually based on African agricultural rights and activities, but they don’t practice it in Africa. So there are seven principles. There’s the Unity which is in Swahili is a Mojo Mojo, which unity is which is today, which is striving for maintaining unity in the family and community. The next one is self-determination, which in Swahili is GI Joe
jock goon Gula.
And I should be pronouncing this correctly because I did take Swahili but that means defining oneself and speaking for oneself. The next one is Juma, which is collective work and responsibility, which is building and maintaining a community and making our brothers and sisters
problem.
Our brothers and sisters’ problems our own and solving them together. Well, that is so important, especially today. The next one is jarama, which is building and supporting our businesses for ourselves and each other. We need to support black businesses. Definitely a great one. Another one is NEA, which is the purpose to build and develop our collective communities together. The next one is creativity, which is komaba. And that is to do whatever we can to live our team to leave our communities more beautiful than they have ever been. And then the last one is faith and faith is Imani. And that means with faith is to believe with our hearts in our people, our family, and the righteousness of our suffering. So those are all beautiful things. And I think it’s great to be celebrating Kwanzaa I did as a kid, I would always go to the Martin Luther King center once a year after Christmas as a child, and for my kids, I always try to put them in the in some African attire some So anyways, but the five unknown facts of Kwanzaa number one is the founder of Colombia was arrested in jail on assault charges. Okay, before I get into it, I, I definitely want to say, I’m not talking about this because I’m against Kwanzaa. I’m just giving you the facts. So it’s up to you, you know how you want to celebrate. And I think after learning about these facts, I was a little bit hesitant about celebrating it because when I found this out, I said, Man, how do I celebrate something when I know too much about it, and that then it may not be positive, that we can take away the leader and still celebrate things as we do with thanksgiving and some other holidays, even Columbus Day and so forth. But anyway, the founder of Kwanzaa, you know, I mentioned his name, and I was saying I wasn’t sure about pronouncing it. Well, he changed his name. That was a Swahili name. And again, I should be able to pronounce that. But his actual real name is Ronald, very American, Ronald McKinley, Everett, and he’s an actual professor, I’m not sure if he’s still a professor right now. But he has been a professor of Pan African Studies at the California State University at Long Beach. But his actual birth name is Ronald McKinley ever, ever. And so he changed his name and chose the name from Kiswahili, which means the name that he chose
Maulana
means a master teacher. And then his last name that he chose is Carter ringu, which means keeper of tradition. But anyway, in 1972, well, Kwanzaa was started, you know, in the 1960s. But in 1972, the founder of Kwanzaa was actually arrested and jailed on charges of assault and false imprisonment. So what happened was that you know, I don’t necessarily always believe in the justice system.
But
when you read a lot of these facts, it seems pretty overwhelming. But the jury found him guilty of two women, that after two women testified that he and his followers, which the followers meaning like the black, the Black Panther, tortured them, and these women were black, these two women were members of the United States, they were American, and black nationalists Colts, he had founded and so forth. So he ended up spending four years in prison. This does not mean a person that went that would go to prison or even convicted of any crime to not create a holiday. I think that’s fine. But I’m just giving you the facts here.
Number two,
that’s untold and not really talked about is, according to and I’m giving you I’m saying according to because I want you to know that this is research being done here. According to the Daily Caller, members of the founder. I’m gonna call him Ronald right now, of the founder, US organization, murdered to Black Panthers and cold blood. So the murders occurred in 1969, when the US organization and the Black Panthers were fighting over which group would control them. So the new Afro American and the studio sinners of the University of Colorado, within and Los LA. So again, according to the Daily Caller, members of the founder of Kwanzaa organization murdered two black panthers in cold blood. Not going to say much about that. Okay. Number three, homemade and educational gifts were encouraged. This is great. I think that is perfect. I love homemade and educational gifts. Those are the best gifts to get. gifts were actually handed out to family members on the last day of Kwanzaa. And they’re they should be handmade, some by cultural theme products, or books and music and art and accessories or other cultural themed products. But it’s preferred that participants like if you guys are celebrating Kwanzaa to buy from a black-owned business. So come on, guys, let’s support black-owned businesses or create your own. And actually, I love having kids create stuff, so it just means it’s so much more meaningful. The fourth is that the first US postage stamp. Kalonzo was issued in 1997. So there have been five designs released since then, and the most recent was actually in 2016. The fifth unknown fact about Kwanzaa is only and this is a drum roll. So, only 13% of black Americans celebrate this holiday. Interesting. Very, very interesting. So according to the net, this is according to the National Retail Foundation. And they found that only 13% or 4.7 million black Americans actually observe the holiday. That is fascinating. So I kind of, you know, it’s interesting to me, it’s like, how many of you guys actually know what Kwanzaa is? And how many actually celebrate it and why to like, I’m curious. So next year, mark my words, I’m gonna have a short documentary about that, because I’m really curious and talking to people once this Corona is, is in our back backbone out of here for a while. Okay. Number six. Kwanzaa is not celebrated in Africa. Okay. I’ve mentioned that already. Some of you guys probably already know that. But many of you guys I know did not because you’re thinking Kwanzaa it’s an African thing. So no, Kwanzaa again is taken from my toondah Jaco wanza, which is Swahili which is the Eastern African coast, and meaning of first fruits. So the founder combined several different African harvest celebrations and included traditions of the Ashanti’s, that tribe and northwest Northwest Africa and the Zulu in the south and South Africa. So he’s combining a bunch of different tribes and celebrations from Africa into one to make it’s own.
How do you guys feel about that?
Huh? Anyways, so that is my my six unknown facts about Kwanzaa is that six, I say five. I think I originally said 512345. I had six. So I hope you guys enjoyed this podcast. Happy Kwanzaa to you. And again, today we are celebrating Mojo, which is unity. So all of you guys striving for maintaining unity in the family and community. We all need unity. God bless you guys. Check out our blog. And if you want to see or read more about the unknown facts about Kwanzaa go to our website at tellers untold.com check out all the information on that blog, send, go to our social media, hashtag tellers, untold subscribe to our YouTube channel. Check out our there I have a new video coming out. And that video though, is really important to me, because that video is an audio description of the trailer from the documentary. So audio description for the blind so the blind will be able to get the description of what’s going on with the trailer and almost complete with the full documentary of that. All right, everyone, be blessed. See you next week. Bye.
