YORK, Pa. (WHTM) — He has never spoken publicly about it, as far as anyone knows, but longtime York residents have long said the founder of Kwanzaa graduated from William Penn Senior High School here.

Dr. Maulana Karenga, who chairs the Africana studies department at California State University Long Beach, founded the seven-day holiday in 1965, according to numerous sources.

A Britannica biography says he graduated from York’s high school in 1958. Karenga was formerly known as Ron Everett.

“That’s one of York’s claims to fame,” said Ophelia Chambliss, vice president of the NAACP’s York chapter. “That’s a really important thing York can say that [it is] a part of.”

Kelly Summerford, director of York’s William C. Goodridge Freedom Center and Underground Railroad Museum, showed a special Kwanzaa-themed tree he decorated as part of a larger “Festival of Trees” at the museum.

Although the extent of this possible trend is difficult to measure, other experts have observed, and Summerford agreed, that Kwanzaa is perhaps not as widely celebrated as it once was.

“I would say after the 1990s, African-Americans or Blacks were not celebrating Kwanzaa the way that they did during the late Eighties and Nineties,” Summerford said.

“The celebrating of Kwanzaa itself probably has diminished a little bit,” Chambliss said.

In recent decades, Martin Luther King Jr. Day and then Juneteenth rose to prominence as holidays. Summerford said what’s special about Kwanzaa is that it’s not a commemoration.

“There’s action with Kwanzaa,” he said.

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The holiday — which is cultural, not religious — focuses on seven different principles, one for each day of the holiday from Dec. 26 through Jan. 1. Most people who celebrate it light candles each day.

Chambliss said York’s role in the holiday’s history, via its founder, can help reinvigorate it locally.

“I think with any kind of ongoing celebration or recognition, you have to keep it fresh in people’s minds,” Chambliss said. “And if every year we have to remind [people] that Kwanzaa does exist and that the originator attended York High, then that’s what we should do.”

African-Americans who celebrate Kwanzaa typically do so in addition to Christmas or other religious holidays, depending on their religions.

“Kwanzaa does not take away from any other cultural or religious celebrations,” Chambliss said. “It’s an accent to it. It enhances it.”

Karenga didn’t respond to messages from abc27 News.

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