Amid the Black Power movement, activist and scholar Maulana Karenga created Kwanzaa as a way to reconnect African Americans with African heritage and community values after the Watts riots. Drawing on first-fruit harvest festivals across the continent, the holiday centers on seven principles—unity, self-determination, collective work, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith—celebrated over seven nights from December 26 to January 1.
Karenga, born Ronald McKinley Everett, founded the cultural nationalist organization US in 1965 in the wake of the Watts uprising, seeking to build a distinctly African American identity separate from mainstream American culture. He synthesized elements of various African harvest celebrations—the name comes from the Swahili phrase "matunda ya kwanza," meaning first fruits—into a new holiday meant for the diaspora rather than any single African nation.
The first Kwanzaa observances took shape in the closing days of 1966, built around candle-lighting ceremonies using a kinara, seven candles representing the Nguzo Saba principles, and communal feasts called karamu. Initially conceived partly as an alternative to Christmas, the holiday evolved over subsequent decades into something many African American families now celebrate alongside Christmas rather than instead of it. By the 1990s Kwanzaa had entered the American mainstream enough to receive commemorative postage stamps and White House recognition, becoming one of the few entirely new holidays invented in twentieth-century America to achieve lasting, nationwide observance.