Sinclair Community College will host the Kuumba Night Celebration, by sharing African American culture and creativity with students in the basement of Building 8 on Thursday, Feb. 28 from 6 to 8:30 p.m.
The celebration, presented by the Sinclair African-American Program and the Sinclair Cultural Diversity Committee, will include a talent showcase of students, Black History trivia, guest speakers, a live band and light refreshments.
The annual celebration was launched in 2000 to help bring students together in creativity and learning by Dr. Boikai Twe, founder of the African-American Studies Program and chair of the Psychology Department at Sinclair.
“Kuumba is defined as ‘to do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it,’” Twe said. “We are making our community more beautiful and beneficial with this event.”
Twe said the talent showcase could include anything from hip-hop and dancing, to spoken word performances. He hopes the variety of performances will not only help students to share their talent with the community, but promote diversity and prepare students for a diverse community beyond Sinclair.
Funding for the event is provided by the Sinclair Cultural Diversity Committee and student donations. Sinclair students are also donating their time by helping set up and coordinate some of the evening’s events.
“Kuumba is mostly about celebration and it comes from our heritage,” Siera Stuart, Psychology major and member of the Kuumba Service Learning Committee said. “So it’s just a way to get back to our roots and get back to the fact that it’s all about creativity and what other people can bring to the table as a means of helping out the community through their creativity.”
Twe said the importance of celebrating ethnicity, along with Black History Month, is really a human rights issue and that all ethnicities have the right to be encouraged and supported.
The Kuumba Night Celebration will also host two guest speakers: Margaret Evelyn Peters, professor at Sinclair and William Roberts II, Chemical Dependency Coordinator at Public Health for Dayton and Montgomery County.
“It’s an opportunity to cultivate diversity and not just with African Americans, but with other cultures,” Margaret Smith, Sinclair student and member of the Kuumba Service Learning Committee said.
Assistant Professor Furaha Henry-Jones is also helping to engage students in her African American Literature and Literature of Africa, Asia and Latin America courses by guiding the production of a display that features the works of several authors, including the poetry of Langston Hughes and the works of two Nigerian authors: “Purple Hibiscus” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe.