[FormerACLUmember]

Forget the notion that Kwanzaa is a holiday for all people. Karenga states that he created it at the height of the black liberation movement as part of a "re-Africanization" process – "a going back to black."

Karenga, still just "Ron Everett" at the time, was heavily involved in the black power movement. He started an organization called US. The letters have nothing to do with "United States" but mean simply "US," as opposed to "THEM."

He dropped the Everett name, adopted the Swahili one, which means "master teacher," shaved his head, and began wearing traditional African clothing. US members, similarly attired, often clashed with other black militant groups such as the Black Panthers. The fighting was about which group would control the new Afro-American Studies Center at UCLA.

There were incidents involving beatings and shootings, including one in 1969 in which two US members shot and killed two Black Panthers. Karenga had other run-ins with the law, including charges that he abused women.

In 1971, he was convicted of assaulting female members of US, and he served time in prison. An LA Times snippet describes the torture of the women as involving a hot soldering iron placed in the mouth of one, while the other's toe was mashed in a vice.

Karenga says that he is the victim; he was quoted in the News: "All the negative charges are in fact disinformation and frame-ups by the FBI and local and national police."

[dennisw]

I always knew this bozo as Ron Karenga .... none of this Manulama? Manulamer? stuff.

[GeronL]

in other words, kwanzaa is a made-up celebration of radical black racists-activists created by a total nutjob

[Protagoras]

How did Ron Everett become a Doctor? Where did he get his doctorate degree? What was in in? What was his thesis about? Did he do all this education before or after he was convicted and spent time for torturing two women?