The group this year started what it calls a Peace Garden, a neat plot of vegetables growing at the end the 1400 block of N. Frazier Street above Master. And some of the collard greens used in the festival will come from that garden.
But the festival also will be a tribute to the perseverance of a family that has been identified with the city's African-American struggle since the 1960s.
The House of Umoja has been at the forefront of the local civil-rights movement since 1968, becoming a force during the urban gang wars of the late 1960s and early '70s.
"We're . . . using the youths as seeds," said founder Queen Mother Falaka Fattah, who has helmed House of Umoja alongside her husband, David Fattah. U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah is their son.
"We're . . . planting seeds in the peace garden. It's a perfect way to celebrate 40 years of service."
The three-day celebration will include panel discussions, music, cook-offs and other events.
"We are going to be celebrating ourselves, our food and culture," Fattah said. "The funds raised will go towards our long-term project."
Part of that project is the long-standing effort to renovate the House of Umoja's "Boys Town" section, a row of Moorish-style, two-story houses bordering the block of Frazier Street and surrounding the group's headquarters at 56th and Master streets.
The House of Umoja (it means unity in Swahili) spent $911,989 in the fiscal year that ended in June 2007 - more than half of that for salaries and consultant fees. In that fiscal year, $681,466 of its money came from government grants and contracts.
A response to gang warfare
Born Frankie Brown, Queen Mother Falaka Fattah - the name means "a new day revealed" in Arabic - founded the House of Umoja in 1968.
It began as the communications wing of the third Black Power Conference, held in North Philly. Inspired by that effort, and profoundly affected by the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., Fattah set up a home, without funding, for wayward African-American youth.
"In terms of philosophy, I've always wanted to do something to help black people," she had said at the time.
That help was sorely needed, especially in the light of rampaging gang warfare that erupted throughout black neighborhoods. In 1973, a total of 43 homicides in the city were connected to warring gangs, and in 1974 another 33 youths were killed. In all, more than 300 homicides between 1964 and 1974 were identified as gang-related.
It wasn't until 1972 when the House of Umoja received its first grant from the state's welfare department, enabling it to house and rehabilitate 15 court-appointed youths.
That grant, for $126,000, helped Fattah move closer to her goal of building a replication of the ancient African city Djenne.
"It will now become the first urban 'Boys Town,' " Fattah said decades ago. "It is a dream I have had for many years."
Fattah modeled the House of Umoja's "Boys Town" section after similar camps for wayward youths that were starting to appear throughout the country.
The moorish motif is "not only a symbol to the youth of their proud heritage, but to bring a new awareness of that heritage to the community," Fattah said in 1979.
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