Ogden hosts the Kwanzaa event; the organizer highlights the celebration as ‘something that brings us together’

OGDEN — Kwanzaa has been a part of life for Betty Sawyer and her family for more than 30 years.

The seven key principles at the center of Kwanzaa, including unity and self-determination, “are something we wanted to make sure we passed on to our children and the next generation,” she said. “All of these things were values ​​that really resonated with us as a young family and something that we wanted to make sure our kids were a part of.”

However, she has not kept the celebration, focused on African-American culture, limited to her family. For more than 25 years, Sawyer has helped organize public Kwanzaa events and Project Success Coalitionwhich she leads, is hosting a Kwanzaa celebration on Sunday, December 29, at Second Baptist Church, 227 27th Street in Ogden. One of the few public Kwanzaa events in the state, it runs from 3-5 p.m., and the public is invited.

Although it comes during the Hanukkah and Christmas seasons, Kwanzaa is a cultural celebration, not a religious event, said Sawyer, who also heads the Ogden chapter of the NAACP. It is celebrated over a seven-day period, December 26 to January 1, and was created in 1966 by Ron Karenga in the wake of riots in Oakland, California, a year earlier.

“Kwanzaa is a time for families and communities to come together to remember the past and to celebrate African-American culture,” according to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. In creating Kwanzaa, Karenga, active in the Black Power movement in the 1960s, said he aimed to “give black people an opportunity to celebrate themselves and their history,” according to the museum.

While rooted in honoring African culture in the United States, everyone is welcome at Sunday’s Kwanzaa event, and Sawyer believes the principles of the celebration are universal. The seven underlying principles of Kwanza are unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economy, purpose, creativity and faith.

“People promote hate and discord, and Kwanzaa is something that brings us together to promote unity and community bonds and promote the sense of unity and oneness that we have as humans on this earth,” Sawyer said.

Three rotating workshops are scheduled as part of Sunday’s Kwanzaa activities. They focus on storytelling, African dance and drumming and a craft.

Past Kwanzaa events Sawyer has helped organize have drawn people from a variety of faiths and backgrounds. The Project Success Coalition, the organizing entity behind next Sunday’s activities, serves the African-American community in Utah and aims to promote community engagement.