End of Kwanzaa marked with Raleigh celebration and performances

RALEIGH (WTVD) -- The African American Cultural Festival of Raleigh and Wake County marked the end of Kwanzaa Friday evening with performances at the Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts.

Raleigh's First Annual Kwanzaa Celebration was recorded at Meymandi Concert Hall and shown on Facebook.

The celebration included the reading of a poem by North Carolina's Poet Laureate, Jaki Shelton Green, a tribute to the late Dr. Baba Chuck Davis, a Raleigh native who founded the Chuck Davis Dancers in New York in 1968 and the African American Dance Ensemble in Durham in 1983, and the reading of the seven principles of Kwanzaa.

RELATED: Kwanzaa 2020: What to know about the holiday

Dec. 26 marks the beginning of Kwanzaa, the seven-night celebration of African American and Pan-African culture.

It is a seven-day non-religious holiday that honors the ancestral roots of African Americans.

Each day of the festival is dedicated to a specific principle, marked by lighting a new candle on the kinara, a seven-branched candelabra.

Click here to watch the celebration.