Kwanzaa Arrives at African Burial Ground National Monument: Umoja!

It was Friday morning after Christmas and for admirers of the beautiful but recently beleaguered African Burial Ground National Monument (ABGNM), at 290 Broadway in downtown Manhattan, that would mean one thing above all: Kwanzaa was here! Umoja! According to a flyer distributed by the National Park Service (NPS) which organized the event, “Umoja” means “unity, to strive for and maintain unity” in Swahili and is the first of the Seven Principles that define the seven days of Kwanzaa.

The second of these principles, “Kujichagulia,” means “self-determination, to define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves” and is a good way to understand what Kwanzaa is, and isn’t, and why despite efforts to broaden its appeal, it isn’t quite for everyone.

That said, as an event the 2025 Kwanzaa celebration couldn’t have been more inviting. First, admission to ABGNM is always free. All that’s required is that one pass through an airport-style security screening, as the ABGMN museum and event space are inside the Ted Weiss Federal Building. While this isn’t fun, it’s the same security protocol observed in numerous city buildings, including City Hall and the Hall of Records on Chambers St.

Second, the program was excellent, including drummers from the Fusha Dance Company; opening remarks by Ramon Mangual, supervisory park manager of the NPS in New York City; an African libation ceremony; and the singing of “Lift Every Voice,” sometimes referred to as the “Black National Anthem,” with words by James Weldon Johnson. This was followed by a Kwanzaa lecture by Minister Monique J. Fortune, Haitian-American Bronx native, and more music, dance, and words. In all, a thoughtful and entertaining way to spend four hours.

The Federalist Papers

Kwanzaa wasn’t the only cause for celebration this day. The fact that the entire ABGNM was open—both its interior space and the outdoor sculptural space—was cause for rejoicing for, quiet as it’s been kept, it’s been a difficult year for the institution. Despite a strong start with a well-executed Black History Month event organized by downtown Council Member Christopher Marte and Assembly Member Charles Fall, by mid-June, things were less sunny lately.

As reported in detail by Straus News, ongoing anti-Trump and anti-ICE protests outside 26 Federal Plaza, which sits directly across Reade Street from the Ted Weiss Federal Building, caused access to the ABGNM to be severely restricted. No longer could citizen, tourist, or reporter walk up Elk Street or across Reade Street to admire the outdoor monument space itself.

Opened in 2007, this sculptural memorial and grounds, designed by Brooklyn natives Rodney Leon and Nicole Hollant-Denis of AARIS architects, is one of the most solemn yet inspiring and welcoming public spaces in the city.

For it to be closed off, even for temporary security reasons, is a great loss. Though the streets reopened in July, they were again closed this autumn. Despite the near-constant presence of reporters and politicians at 26 Federal Plaza, none of them appear to have noticed, or at least cared to remark upon, the burial ground’s inaccessibility.

While numerous conversations with both NYPD and Federal Protective Service officers on site confirmed the closure was, again, protest-security-related, nobody could say when the streets would reopen.

Come October, there was the federal government shutdown. Then, in November, after the shutdown ended, sidewalk repairs on Broadway directly in front the ABGNM caused another forced closure.

On Nov. 16, the ABGNM took to Facebook to announce its reopening and, with no prior announcement, by mid-December Elk Streets was again open, with no NYPD detail politely blocking the way. Likewise with the FPS officers at Reade Street. Let freedom ring!

Asked to comment on these closures, nobody associated with ABGMN would say a word, or even acknowledge that the closures were the direct result of the 26 Federal Plaza protests.

The ABCs of Kwanzaa—With Three As!

Briefly, Kwanzaa was the invention of a self-named Black man, Maulanga Karenga (aka Ron Karenga, born Ronald McKinley Everett in 1941 in Maryland), and conceived partly in response to the August 1965 Watts Riots in Los Angeles, where he was then a UCLA graduate student, and historic trends in Black self-determination and Black Nationalism.

The first Kwanzaa celebrations were held in 1966 and drew together strands of thought about American Black culture in an explicitly Pan-African context. While these are, to say the least, very complex issues, Kwanzaa wasn’t an alternative Christmas festival but an alternative festival and an explicitly anti-Christian one.

This was a radical idea even among Blacks, most themselves Christian and often passionately so, and not least when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was still alive.

Meanwhile, Ron Karenga’s life would veer sharply off course as his radical Black Nationalist group, the US Organization, became bitter rivals with the Black Panthers, an enmity promoted by both LAPD and FBI in its then top secret anti-”radical” surveilliance program, COINTELPRO.

It was in this hothouse atmosphere of rivalry and intrigue that in 1971, Karenga went on trial in Los Angeles for the false imprisonment and assault of two women at his home in Inglewood. Karenga was convicted and sentenced to state prison. Whatever the truth of the matter—Karenga has declined to discuss it except to note that his prosecution was political—he used his prison time wisely, receiving parole in 1975 and subsequently earned a PhD from the University of Southern California.

Presently, the 84-year-old Karenga is the chair Africana Studies department at California State University at Long Beach.

Even as Kwanzaa evolved toward a broadly enveloping Afrocentric complement to whatever religious practice one might have, there’s still the problem of timing. Overwhelmed by Christmas on one side and looming Black History Month on the other (at the time of Kwanzaa’s inception there was only Black History Week), if the event still seeks more widespread recognition, how any person negotiates the currents in the tidal basin of history is also an act of self-determination.