The Black Student Union will be serving up free fried chicken, sweet potato pie, collard greens, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes and cornbread for all who attend its annual Kwanzaa Celebration on Saturday night in the EMU Ballroom.
BSU Programs Coordinator Assistant Abrina Wheatfall expects about 150 people to show up, and she said she’s hoping a wide range of students will be interested.
The traditional soul-food dinner and live entertainment will begin at 7 p.m.
“There is a huge conception that Kwanzaa is religious,” Wheatfall said. She said she wants to dispel this myth and share the holiday with the University as a way of showing black culture in a positive light.
Seven different groups of BSU students will act out seven skits, each one a representation of the seven separate Kwanzaa principles.
The holiday is celebrated from Dec. 26 through Jan. 1, and every day one candle is lit to celebrate each key idea: Unity, self determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith.
These are key values in African-American culture and it is “important for the UO to see our culture in a positive light and acknowledge the values we share,” Wheatfall wrote an e-mail to the Emerald.
Although Kwanzaa’s origins are ancient, the holiday was created in the United States in 1966. Maulana Karenga, a professor in the Department of Black Studies at California State University, Long Beach, established the holiday in effort to preserve and revitalize African-American culture. Kwanzaa is now a widely celebrated African-American and Pan-African holiday.
According to the official Kwanzaa Web site, the word “kwanzaa” is derived from the phrase “matunda ya kwanza,” or “first fruits” in Swahili, the most widely spoken language in Africa.
Karenga states in a 2004 message on the Web site that Kwanzaa is a way for Pan-Africans and African-Americans to come together like their ancestors and elders before them and “reinforce the bonds” between each other. It is a way to “give thanks for the harvest of good we have gathered from the fertile fields of lands, the fruitful fields of our lives, and the bruising and blood-stained battlefields of our struggles.”
Kwanzaa is just one of many ways that Karenga has contributed to U.S. history. During the 1960s, he served on the founding and executive committee of the Black Power Conferences, and helped to organize and wrote the mission statement for the Million Man March/Day of Absence. He was also active in many other prominent organizations in the black liberation movement, and he has earned two doctorates and authored numerous scholarly articles and 12 books, according to www.africawithin.com.

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