More than 300 people gathered in the Jazz Cafe in Ontario Sunday evening to celebrate the black holiday Kwanzaa with children's crafts, traditional music and dancing and a solemn candle-lighting ceremony.

The festival, "Celebrating a culture and sharing a vision," is the 41st annual Kwanzaa commemoration and the first to be jointly sponsored by three Southern California organizations: the San Gabriel Valley National Council of Negro Women, the Riverside Alumni Chapter of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity and the Inland Area Kwanzaa Group.

"Kwanzaa is basically a cultural celebration that brings family and community together," said Monique Stennis, a member of the National Council of Negro Women and one of the organizers of the event. "For black people it means coming together as a community. There are seven principles of Kwanzaa and we talk about those principles and see how we can be a better community for the next year."

Those principles are unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith, she said.

The program culminated when children lit the kinara's seven candles.

"Usually when you celebrate Kwanzaa, you light a candle each night (for seven nights) and you talk about that particular principle," Stennis explained. "Since we are having this event, we are going to light all of the candles and have the children come up and explain what each principle means and then have the lighting."

Helping to preside over the ceremony was Assemblywoman Wilmer Amina Carter, D-Rialto, who has spent 20 years organizing Inland area Kwanzaa observances.

"This year I'm so excited," she said as she walked into the restaurant, "because we are finally practicing collective work and responsibility with the three organizations.

"Kwanzaa is an African-American indigenous holiday," she said. "It means we have a cultural holiday to bring to the table with everyone else in America."

Five drummers played a traditional African beat while two women danced for the audience before the celebrants ate a soul-food banquet.

Children made beaded bracelets and necklaces and wrote their ambitions on scrolls.

Thirteen-year-old Gui'Rell Roberston, of San Bernardino, made a picture frame for his parents.

"It's a good time to come together to share the good things that we have with each other," he said as he put the finishing touches on the outside of the frame. "I've been to different Kwanzaa celebrations before. This one is nice."

This article was provided by: The Press-Enterprise
Written by: Darrell R. Santschi