Free Republic

  Senator Obama is one of key leaders in a campaign to make Juneteeth Day a National Holiday in the United States. Juneteeth Day occurs on every June 19th, the anniversary of General Granger announcing the emancipation of slaves in the South West. The Holiday would be celebrated on the third Friday in June. Here's what the NYT wrote about it on 2004: "Most gatherings are decidedly upbeat, but the sobering reason for the holiday has also been part of Juneteenth's growth. Dr. Ronald Myers, the leader of a movement to make Juneteenth a national holiday, says June 19 should...

(AP) Kwanzaa the Lion Celebrates Birthday Dec 26 2005 WACO, Texas The seven-day holiday of Kwanzaa began Monday, but the celebration started early at the Cameron Park Zoo. A South African lion named "Kwanzaa" celebrated his first birthday, and the weekend party included 10 pounds of horse meat fashioned into a cake, whipped cream and a carrot representing a candle. Kwanzaa was born at the zoo on Christmas Eve 2004, and now weighs more than 115 pounds. Zookeeper Manda Butler said Kwanzaa will be on display through January as crews prepare to send him to the zoo in Birmingham, Ala....

BLACKS IN AMERICA have suffered an endless series of insults and degradations, the latest of which goes by the name of Kwanzaa. Ron Karenga (aka Dr. Maulana Ron Karenga) invented the seven-day feast (Dec. 26-Jan. 1) in 1966, branding it a black alternative to Christmas. The idea was to celebrate the end of what he considered the Christmas-season exploitation of African Americans. According to the official Kwanzaa Web site -- as opposed, say, to the Hallmark Cards Kwanzaa site -- the celebration was designed to foster "conditions that would enhance the revolutionary social change for the masses of Black Americans"...

CHICAGO, Dec. 26 (UPI) -- The largest annual Kwanzaa celebration of African-American culture in the United States began Monday at Malcolm X College in Chicago. Ayoka Samuels, a consultant for the college's Kwanzaa committee said a major misconception is that about the seven-day festival is that it's meant to be "the black Christmas," the Chicago Sun-Times said. Samuels said many who celebrate it do substitute it for Christmas, and if gifts are exchanged, they must be either educational or a symbol of African heritage. Maulana Ron Karenga, now a professor of black studies at California State University, Long Beach, created...

Kwanzaa: A Holiday From The FBI anncoulter.org | 12/24/2002 | ANN COULTER TRENT LOTT, call your office: Apparently some parts of American history can be sanitized and forgotten. Earlier this week, President George Bush issued a formal White House proclamation celebrating Kwanzaa. Sounding like a "Saturday Night Live" send-up, Bush praised the "seven principles" of Kwanzaa, "known as Nguzo Saba," and discussed the "early harvest gatherings called 'matunda ya kwanza,' or first fruits." He included the usual claptrap about how Kwanzaa celebrates "traditional African values" and "uniting people of diverse backgrounds and beliefs." It is a fact that Kwanzaa was...