Katherine Payne talks to a fellow churchgoer just before a Kwanzaa celebration held at Union Hill Missionary Baptist Church on Friday.The music stopped, then started, then stopped again, and the all-white dance group looked at each other with confused looks on their faces. They knew their dance, so soon they were ignoring the skipping music and dancing in celebration of Kwanzaa.
“That’s good,” deacon William Hudgins said Friday from his seat, clapping his hands to keep the beat going.
“Those young people did not let the devil override,” Katherine Payne said to the 50 people gathered at Union Hill Missionary Baptist Church.
Carolyn Lewis, organizer of the church’s fifth annual Kwanzaa celebration, had decided to invite Covenant Fellowship Church of Dunlap, Tenn., to bring their dancers to show that Kwanzaa should unite people regardless of race.
“Kwanzaa,” she said, “is for everybody.”