In “Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture” Maulana Karenga (the creator of Kwanzaa) describes creativity (kuumba) as “a commitment to being creative within the context of the national community vocation of restoring our people to their traditional greatness and thus leaving our community more beneficial and beautiful than we, i.e., each generation inherited it.”

In further describing “creativity” (kuumba), the author discusses the subject in terms of two main concepts: “creative restoration” and “Kwanzaa as creative restoration”.

And in describing “Kwanzaa as creative restoration” he views it as a creative act of restoring African culture or “that which was in ruins or disuse” in parts of Africa and among African Americans in the United States.

Through his act of creating Kwanzaa, the author has given others a means to participate in the creative restoration of African culture to those who were once denied their heritage.

Reference:  “Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture”, by Maulana Karenga,   University of Sankore Press, Los Angeles, California.

Marian Anderson made her Town Hall debut in New York. Her performance was described by Howard Taubman, the New York Times reviewer, as music making that probed too deep for words.

Nat King Cole’s daughter from his second marriage, Natalie Cole (February 6, 1950 -- December 31, 2015), also became a singer; she had a hit “duet” with her late father’s recording of “Unforgettable” in 1991… Nat King Cole played W.

The first nationally broadcast telethon for the United Negro College fund is held and raises 14.1 million

Alarmed by impact of the Dunmore proclamation, Washington reversed himself and authorized the enlistment of free Blacks.

Spingarn Medal presented to Paul R. Williams for his achievements as an architect.

Annie Holland, born on this day, an educator, founds the Parent Teachers Association (PTA) in North Carolina.

Ambassador Richard Lewis Baltimore III was born on December 31, 1947 in New York City, New York to Judge Richard Lewis Baltimore, Jr.

Odetta Felious Gordon, the folk singer and activist known as Odetta is born on this day in Birmingham, Alabama.

Thurl Lee Bailey is a retired American professional basketball player who played in the National Basketball Association (NBA) from 1983 to 1999 with the Utah Jazz and Minnesota Timberwolves. Bailey has also beena broadcast analyst for the Utah Jazz and the University of Utah and aninspirational speaker, singer, songwriter, and film actor.

Bailey was born on April 7, 1961, in Washington D.C., but grew up in Bladensburg, Maryland, a suburb of Washington. He attended North Carolina State University where he played for the N.C. State Wolfpack Basketball team. Bailey was a part of the Wolfpack team that played in the 1983 NCAA Championship where they defeated the University of HoustonCougars led by future NBA stars Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler.

The Utah Jazz chose Bailey as the seventh pick in the first round of the 1983 NBA draft by the Utah Jazz. Bailey would play with the Jazz until 1991 when he was traded to the Minnesota Timberwolves, along with a 1992 second-round draft pick. Bailey played for the Timberwolves for three seasons until 1994 when he left the NBA and played for the Greek professional basketball club Panionios B.C. in the Greek League for the 1994–1995 season. From 1995 to 1998 he played in the Italian League for Polti Cantu (1995–97) and Stefanel Milano (1997–98). He was the Italian League’s 1998 All-Star Games Most Valuable Player before returning to the Jazz as a free agent in 1999. Bailey retired from the NBA after the 1998–1999 NBA season.

Bailey began his involvement in community service during his basketball career. He directed basketball camps for youth beginning in 1984. His camps mostly focus on students with serious illnesses or disadvantaged backgrounds. He has worked with various charities which include Make-A-Wish, D.A.R.E, and the Happy Factory. Bailey’s record of service in the community generated numerous awards, including the NBA’s prestigious Kennedy Community Award, the Utah Association for Gifted Children’s Community Service Award, Sigma Gamma Chi Fraternity’s Exemplary

Salem Baptist Church, in Alton, Illinois, first organized in 1819, still stands as the only predominantly African American congregation in Madison County, which is situated along the Mississippi River across from Missouri. African American stonemason Madison Banks and white contractor Samuel Marshall, both from Alton, built the church sometime in the early 1820s.  They were assisted by two members of the congregation, John Walker and William Emery.  Conflicting dates about the church’s founding can be attributed to the later construction of the first building in 1912. It is believed that Salem Baptist Church’s first congregants were organized in 1819 on a local farm, by a Baptist Missionary named James Ely Welch.

Illinois was a free state, admitted to the union as such in 1818, but the state allowed fugitive slaves to be captured.  Additionally “Black Codes,” enforced prior to 1865, prevented full equality for African Americans in Illinois. Those living in the surrounding communities were frequently restricted from economic and educational opportunities that whites took for granted. Therefore, Salem Baptist served not just as a place of worship, but also a center for educational, cultural, social, and community events as well as club meetings and other non-religious activities for African Americans in the area.  

The congregation at Salem Baptist Church built a new structure, the one currently used, in 1912.  At the same time a Presbyterian Church (also named Salem) was erected just one mile away from the Baptist Church. As a result, Salem Baptist Church increasingly became referred to in Madison County as the community’s “black” church, whereas Salem Presbyterian functioned as a “white” church.   This designation occurred despite the fact that Salem Baptist’s activities were advertised in the local newspaper and attended by blacks and whites.  In 1923, for example, a local newspaper reported that the “annual church picnic attracted more white people than colored.”

In addition to annual picnics, Salem Baptist

Residents of Rochester, N.Y., joined Frederick Douglass in a vigil in anticipation of the Emancipation Proclamation, which went into effect at midnight.

Scupltor and educator Selma Burke was born on this day in Mooresville, North Carolina. She is commissioned to create a profile of President Franklin D. Roosevelt after a national competition sponsored by the Fine Arts Commission in Washington, D.C.; the completed project, a plaque, is unveiled and installed at the Record of Deeds Building, Washington D.C.

Hulan Jack sworn in a Manhattan Borough president.

Singer Donna Summer, known as Queen of Disco, is born on this day in Boston, Massachusetts.

The son of former slaves, Roland Hayes, born June 3, 1887 in Curryville, Georgia, became the first African American male to become an internationally acclaimed concert vocalist.  As a youth, he sang in his Baptist church and on street corners for tips before attending Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee where he performed and toured with the famed Fisk Jubilee Singers, an experience that eventually landed him in Boston.  Working odd jobs, by 1915 Hayes had saved up enough money to rent Boston’s Symphony Hall and give his first recital to an audience stunned by his masterfully executed selection of Negro spirituals, lieder and arias by Schubert, Tchaikovsky, and Mozart.  Continuing to act as his own promoter and manager, Hayes next toured the United States and England where in 1920 he performed for King George V and Queen Mary and studied lieder with Sir George Henschel. 

Returning to the United States in 1922, Hayes was flattered by glowing reviews following concerts in Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, and at New York City’s Carnegie Hall.  He took additional voice lessons and there were several more tours of Europe, including a stop in the Soviet Union and a command performance for Queen Mother Maria Christina of Spain.  A rather brutal racial incident in 1942 in Rome, Georgia involving Hayes and his family persuaded him to leave his home in the segregated South.

He published My Song in 1948, a collection of African American religious folk songs. Among his recognitions were the Spingarn Medal presented to him by the National Association of Colored People in 1924, eight honorary academic degrees, and induction into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 1991.  In 1950, Hayes commenced a four-year stint teaching voice at Boston University, and in 1962, at age 75, he gave his farewell concert at Carnegie Hall.  Hayes died in Boston on December 31, 1976.  The Roland Hayes Museum in Calhoun, Georgia opened its doors in the year 2000.

Date of Independence: March 6,1957

Formerly: the Gold Coast, a British colony

Flag: the three colors (red, green, and black)and the black star in the middle are all symbolic of the pan-Africanist movement, which was a key theme in the early history of Ghanas independence

Summary of Ghanas history: Much was expected and hoped for from Ghana at independence, but like all new countries during the Cold War, Ghana faced immense challenges. Ghanas first President, Kwame Nkrumah, was ousted nine years after independence, and for the next twenty-five years, Ghana was typically governed by military rulers, with varying economic impacts. The country returned to stable democratic rule in 1992, however, and has built a reputation as a stable, liberal economy.

Ghana’s independence from Britain in 1957 was widely celebrated in the African diaspora. African-Americans, including Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X, visited Ghana, and many Africans still struggling for their own independence looked on it as a beacon of the future to come.

Within Ghana, people believed they would finally benefit from the wealth generated by the countrys cocoa farming and gold mining industries. 

Much was also expected of Kwame Nkrumah, the charismatic first President of Ghana. He was an experienced politician. He had led the Convention Peoples Party during the push for independence and served as Prime Minister of the colony from 1954 to 1956, as Britain eased toward independence. He was also an ardent pan-Africanist and helped found the Organization of African Unity.

Initially, Nkrumah rode a wave of support in Ghana and the world. Ghana, however, faced all the same, daunting challenges of Independence that would soon be felt across Africa. Among these was its economic dependence on the West.

Nkrumah tried to free Ghana from this dependence by building the Akosambo Dam on the Volta River, but the project put Ghana deeply in debt and created intense opposition. His own party worried the project would

Francisco José Tenreiro , in full Francisco José de Vasques Tenreiro (born January 20, 1921, São Tomé—died December 31, 1963, Lisbon, Portugal), African poet writing in Portuguese whose poems express the sufferings caused by colonialist exploitation of the indentured labourers of the island of São Tomé.

Tenreiro, the son of a Portuguese administrator and an Angolan woman, spent much of his life in Portugal, where he earned a doctorate in geography from the University of Lisbon in 1961. Subsequently he worked as a professor at the Higher Institute for Overseas Social and Political Sciences in Lisbon and became a deputy representing Sao Tome and Principe in the Portuguese National Assembly. At the University of Lisbon in the 1950s and early 1960s, Tenreiro was a founder of and central figure in the Centro de Estudos Africanos (Centre for African Studies). Several members of that group became renowned African leaders, including Agostinho Neto, the first president of independent Angola; Samora Machel, the first president of independent Mozambique; and Amílcar Cabral, who helped lead Guinea-Bissau to independence.

Tenreiro’s two volumes of poems, Ilha de nome santo (1942; “Island of a Holy Name”) and the posthumous Coração em África (1964; “Heart in Africa”), record both a love of Africa as well as a fraternal bond with oppressed blacks throughout the world. A scholar of merit as well as a literary critic, he wrote Panorâmica da literatura norte-americana (1945), which was inspired by reading black poets of the Harlem Renaissance. In 1958 he coedited, with Mário de Andrade, a major anthology of Lusophone African poetry, Poesia negra de expressão portuguesa. In 2008 Sao Tome and Principe honoured Tenreiro by releasing a banknote featuring his portrait and poetry.