Kwanza

n.p.: the author, 1969. Pamphlet. Two 8.5x11 inch sheets stapled together at upper left corner, very good. Harriet Smith, later known as Sister Makinya Sibeko-Kouate, was a pivotal activist at Merritt College in the 1960s, serving as student body president and organizing a Black Studies program that brought together several of the founding members of the Black Panther Party in 1966. During her college years she met Ron Karenga, who had drawn up ideas for a new Afrocentric holiday called Kwanzaa. She drafted more elaborate and specific guidelines for the holiday, and organized her first Kwanzaa celebration in 1967 in Berkeley (Karenga had held the very first in Los Angeles the previous year). Near the end of her life, she was cited as Queen Mother of Kwanzaa in 2015. These two sheets outline the meaning, symbols, dates and procedures of the holiday. The final line is "6-2469-H. Smith," which appears to refer to June 24 of 1969. By this time she was traveling widely to promote Kwanza (note her spelling with a single 'a' at the end), and these packets would have been distributed at such talks and meetings. In 1968 she had created the Kwanza Organizers, a group that offered instruction to residents of the San Francisco Bay Area who wished to celebrate the holiday themselves. We have several copies of this packet, which are duplicates from her personal papers - a window into the early dissemination of Kwanzaa, with an ideal provenance.