Saturday, December 13, 1997

Kwanzaa creator urges students to ask 'Who am I?'

By Nancy Feigenbaum / Daily Press

HAMPTON, VA. - Thirty-one years after he created Kwanzaa, university professor Maulana Karenga is traveling the country rallying excited crowds to the holiday with the help of a postage stamp.

A postage stamp?

The Kwanzaa stamp -- which has been on sale for several months -- was ceremonially "unveiled" again Monday evening at Hampton University. Karenga turned the event into a celebration of the holiday that strives to give black society an ethical and cultural voice.

Karenga, chairman of the Department of Black Studies at California State University at Long Beach, said the stamp recognizes black America's resolve to claim its place in society. Kwanzaa is not the result of some act of Congress, he said, but a public celebration that exists because it has been embraced by growing numbers of people.

"That's what the stamp is -- recognition of public space and respect. It is to claim public space that belongs to us," Karenga said.

An overflow crowd of more than 250 interrupted him several times with applause and ovations. Karenga responded by leading them in chants of the seven principles of Kwanzaa: unity, self determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith.

Karenga and his wife, Tiamoyo Karenga, who sports a large afro, looked like a throwback to the 1960s to some of the teen-age students in the audience. But more than 60 people, from professors and students to young children, stood in line after Karenga's speech to get his autograph on Kwanzaa cards and envelopes and books explaining the holiday.

After reviewing the principles of Kwanzaa, Karenga challenged the university students to spend the last day asking "Who am I?"

The answer, he said, is not on their Hampton University student ID cards but in their understanding of their heritage.

"Who are you in history? That's what I want to know. How do you bear the burden and glory of your history? How shall we count you?" he asked.

Mia Cox-Johnson, 18, a freshman from Boston, said three decades have not changed the meaning of the holiday's message. "I understood a lot of what he was saying," she said, adding that her family switched from Christmas to Kwanzaa two years ago because it is less commercial.

Shaleena Capers, a freshman from Silver Spring, Md., said she has been celebrating for at least four years. She stood in line to have Karenga autograph a Kwanzaa card. "It's really exciting to get to meet him," she said.

His focus on unity is important for the black community, Capers said.

"In order for us to progress," she said. "we need to become one and unite."

(c) 1997, Daily Press (Newport News, Va.).

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