Maulana Ndabezitha Karenga (born Ronald McKinley Everett;[2][3][4] July 14, 1941) is an African-American professor of Africana studies, activist and author, best known as the creator of the pan-African and African-American holiday of Kwanzaa.
Ron Everett was born in Parsonsburg, Maryland, the fourteenth child and seventh son in the family. His father was a tenant farmer and Baptist minister who employed the family to work fields under an effective sharecropping arrangement.
The Watts riots broke out as Karenga was a year into his doctoral studies. Karenga and the Circle of Seven established a ultra-radical, paramilitary, black nationalist cult organization in the aftermath called US (meaning “Us black people or United Slave”).[8]..
US developed a youth component with para-military aspects called the Simba Wachanga
...For Karenga, a major figure in the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the creation of such holidays also underscored an essential premise that “you must have a cultural revolution before the violent revolution. The cultural revolution gives identity, purpose and direction.”[5]
US engaged in violent competition with the Black Panther Party in their claim to be a revolutionary vanguard. This heightened level of conflict eventually led to a shoot-out at UCLA in 1969 in which two Panthers were killed. Following the UCLA shootout, Panthers and US members carried out a series of retaliatory shootings that resulted in at least two more deaths among the Panthers.
In 1971, Karenga was sentenced to one to ten years in prison on counts of felonious assault and false imprisonment.[15] One of the victims gave testimony of how Karenga and other men tortured her and another woman. The woman described having been stripped and beaten with an electrical cord. Karenga’s estranged wife, Brenda Lorraine Karenga, testified that she sat on the other woman’s stomach while another man forced water into her mouth through a hose. - wikipedia.org/
Another way of distinguishing might be to think of Karenga’s gang as the Crips and the Panthers as the bloods. Despite all their rhetoric about white people, they reserved their most vicious violence for each other. In 1969, the two groups squared off over the question of who would control the new Afro-American Studies Center at UCLA. According to a Los Angeles Times article, Karenga and his adherents backed one candidate, the Panthers another. Both groups took to carrying guns on campus, a situation that, remarkably, did not seem to bother the university administration. The Black Student Union, however, set up a coalition to try and bring peace between the Panthers and the group headed by the man whom the Times labeled “Ron Ndabezitha Everett-Karenga.”
On Jan. 17, 1969, about 150 students gathered in a lunchroom to discuss the situation. Two Panthers—admitted to UCLA like many of the black students as part of a federal program that put high-school dropouts into the school—apparently spent a good part of the meeting in verbal attacks against Karenga. This did not sit well with Karenga’s followers, many of whom had adopted the look of their leader, pseudo-African clothing and a shaved head.
In modern gang parlance, you might say Karenga was “dissed” by John Jerome Huggins, 23, and Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter, 26. After the meeting, the two Panthers were met in the hallway by two brothers who were members of US, George P. and Larry Joseph Stiner. The Stiners pulled pistols and shot the two Panthers dead. One of the Stiners took a bullet in the shoulder, apparently from a Panther’s gun.
“The students here have handled themselves in an absolutely impeccable manner,” UCLA chancellor Charles E. Young told the L.A. Times. “They have been concerned. They haven’t argued who the director should be; they have been saying what kind of person he should be.” Young made those remarks after the shooting....
Despite all his rhetoric about white racism, I could find no record that he or his followers ever raised a hand in anger against a white person. In fact, Karenga had an excellent relationship with Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty in the ‘60s and also met with then-Governor Ronald Reagan and other white politicians. But he and his gang were hell on blacks. And Karenga certainly seems to have had a low opinion of his fellow African-Americans. “People think it’s African, but it’s not,” he said about his holiday in an interview quoted in the Washington Post. “I came up with Kwanzaa because black people in this country wouldn’t celebrate it if they knew it was American. Also, I put it around Christmas because I knew that’s when a lot of bloods would be partying.” “Bloods” is a ‘60s California slang term for black people. - http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=20535
Kwanzaa is a celebration with its roots in the black nationalist movement of the 1960s. Karenga established it to help African Americans reconnect with their African cultural and historical heritage by uniting in meditation and study of African traditions and Nguzo Saba, the "seven principles of African Heritage", which Karenga said "is a communitarian African philosophy". For Karenga, a major figure in the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the creation of such holidays also underscored an essential premise "you must have a cultural revolution before the violent revolution. The cultural revolution gives identity, purpose and direction."[9]
During the early years of Kwanzaa, Karenga said it was meant to be an alternative to Christmas. He believed Jesus was psychotic and Christianity was a "White" religion that Black people should shun.[10] As Kwanzaa gained mainstream adherents, Karenga altered his position so practicing Christians would not be alienated, then stating in the 1997 Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community, and Culture, "Kwanzaa was not created to give people an alternative to their own religion or religious holiday."[11] Many African Americans who celebrate Kwanzaa do so in addition to observing Christmas.[12] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwanzaa#History_and_etymology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Karenga:
Born in Parsonsburg, Maryland to an African-American family, Karenga studied at Los Angeles City College and the University of California, Los Angeles. During his student years, he involved himself in activism and joined the Congress of Racial Equality. Through his activism, he became involved in violent clashes with the Black Panther Party. In 1971, he was convicted of felonious assault and false imprisonment. He was imprisoned in California Men's Colony until he received parole in 1974. He received his PhD shortly afterward and began a career in academia.
Ron Everett was born in Parsonsburg, Maryland, the fourteenth child and seventh son in the family. His father was a tenant farmer and Baptist minister who employed the family to work fields under an effective sharecropping arrangement.[5] Everett moved to Los Angeles in 1959, joining his older brother who was a teacher there, and attended Los Angeles City College (LACC). He became active with civil rights organizations Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), took an interest in African studies, and was elected as LACC's first African-American student president.[6] After earning his associate degree, he matriculated at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and earned BA and MA degrees in political science. He studied Swahili, Arabic and other African-related subjects. Among his influences at UCLA were Jamaican anthropologist and Negritudist Councill Taylor who contested the Eurocentric view of alien cultures as primitive.[7] During this period he took the name Karenga (Swahili for "keeper of tradition") and the title Maulana (Swahili-Arabic for "master teacher").[5]
US Organization[edit]
The Watts riots broke out when Karenga was a year into his doctoral studies. Karenga and the Circle of Seven established a community organization in the aftermath called US (meaning "Us black people").[8] The organization joined in several community revival programs and was featured in press reports. Karenga cited Malcolm X's Afro-American Unity program as an influence on the US organization's work:
Malcolm was the major African American thinker that influenced me in terms of nationalism and Pan-Africanism. As you know, towards the end, when Malcolm is expanding his concept of Islam, and of nationalism, he stresses Pan-Africanism in a particular way. And he argues that, and this is where we have the whole idea that cultural revolution and the need for revolution, he argues that we need a cultural revolution, he argues that we must return to Africa culturally and spiritually, even if we can’t go physically. And so that’s a tremendous impact on US.[9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Organization#Creation_of_Kwanzaa_(1966):Creation of Kwanzaa (1966)[edit]
Karenga's ideas culminated in the invention of the Kwanzaa festival in 1966, designed as the first specifically African-American holiday. It was to be celebrated over the Christmas/New Year period.[4] Karenga said his goal was to "give Blacks an alternative to the existing holiday and give Blacks an opportunity to celebrate themselves and history, rather than simply imitate the practice of the dominant society."[5]
The group's ideals are summed up in the seven principles: Unity (Umoja), Self-Determination (Kujichagulia), Collective Work and Responsibility (Ujima), Cooperative Economics (Ujamaa), Purpose (Nia), Creativity (Kuumba), and Faith (Imani).
For Karenga, a major figure in the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the creation of such holidays also underscored an essential premise that “you must have a cultural revolution before the violent revolution. The cultural revolution gives identity, purpose and direction.”[6][7]
As racial disturbances spread across the country, Karenga appeared at a series of black power conferences, joining other groups in urging the establishment of a separate political structure for African-Americans.[citation needed] US developed a youth component with para-military aspects called the Simba Wachanga which advocated and practiced community self-defense and service to the masses.[citation needed]
In 1966, Karenga founded the newspaper Harambee, which started as a newsletter for US and eventually became the newspaper for the Los Angeles Black Congress, an umbrella organization for several groups.[10]
In 1971, Karenga was sentenced to one to ten years in prison on counts of felonious assault and false imprisonment.[14] One of the victims gave testimony of how Karenga and other men tortured her and another woman. The woman described having been stripped and beaten with an electrical cord. Karenga's estranged wife, Brenda Lorraine Karenga, testified that she sat on the other woman’s stomach while another man forced water into her mouth through a hose.
A May 14, 1971, article in the Los Angeles Times described the testimony of one of the women:
Deborah Jones, who once was given the Swahili title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis' mouth and placed against Miss Davis' face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vise. Karenga, head of US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said. They also were hit on the heads with toasters.[15]
Jones and Brenda Karenga testified that Karenga believed the women were conspiring to poison him, which Davis has attributed to a combination of ongoing police pressure and his own drug abuse.[5][16]
Karenga denied any involvement in the torture, and argued that the prosecution was political in nature.[5][17] He was imprisoned at the California Men's Colony, where he studied and wrote on feminism, Pan-Africanism and other subjects. The US organization fell into disarray during his absence and was disbanded in 1974. After he petitioned several black state officials to support his parole on fair sentencing grounds, it was granted in 1975.[18]
Karenga has declined to discuss the convictions with reporters and does not mention them in biographical materials.[16] During a 2007 appearance at Wabash College, he again denied the charges and described himself as a former political prisoner.[19]
Later in his career, in 1994, he was awarded a second Ph.D., in social ethics, from the University of Southern California (USC), for an 803-page dissertation entitled "Maat, the moral ideal in ancient Egypt: A study in classical African ethics."
Karenga is the Chair of the Africana Studies Department at California State University, Long Beach.[citation needed] He is the director of the Kawaida Institute for Pan African Studies and the author of several books, including his "Introduction to Black Studies", a comprehensive Black/African Studies textbook now in its fourth edition.[citation needed] He is also known for having co-hosted, in 1984, a conference that gave rise to the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations, and in 1995, he sat on the organizing committee and authored the mission statement of the Million Man March.[citation needed] Karenga delivered a eulogy at the 2001 funeral service of New Black Panther Party leader Khalid Abdul Muhammad, praising him for his organizing activities and commitment to black empowerment.
Karenga created Kwanzaa in 1966[11] to be the first pan-African holiday. He said his goal was to "give Blacks an alternative to the existing holiday and give Blacks an opportunity to celebrate themselves and their history, rather than simply imitate the practice of the dominant society."[12] It is inspired by African "first fruit" traditions, and the name is derived from the name for the Swahili first fruit celebration, "matunda ya kwanza."[13] The rituals of the holiday promote African traditions and Nguzo Saba, the "seven principles of African Heritage" that Karenga described as "a communitarian African philosophy":