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Ron KarengaDr. Ron Karenga (Maulana Ron Karenga, Maulana Karenga, Ron Ndabezitha Everett-Karenga, Ron N. Everett) is an author and activist best known as the founder of the African-American holiday of Kwanzaa, first celebrated in California, December 26, 1966 to January 1, 1967. Karenga was born on a poultry farm in Maryland, the fourteenth child of a Baptist minister. He came to California in the late 1950s to attend Los Angeles City College and received a B.A.. He was admitted to UCLA as part of a federal program for high-school dropouts where he received a Master's degree in political science and African studies. At the beginning of the 1960s, Karenga met Malcolm X and began to embrace black nationalism and following the Watts riots in 1965, he interrupted his doctorate studies at UCLA and joined the Black Power Movement. During this time he awarded himself the title "maulana," Swahili for "master teacher" and established himself as a leading "cultural nationalist". Karenga formed the United Slaves Organization (US), an outspoken black separatist group. In 1969, the US and the Black Panthers disagreed over who should head 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. The Black Student Union set up a coalition to try and bring peace between the groups, which ended when US members, George P. & Larry Joseph Stiner, shot dead two members of the Black Panthers, John Jerome Huggins and Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter. The killing was dismissed by UCLA chancellor Charles E. Young as an unrelated incident http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=1776. The Black Panthers at the time accused Karenga of working with the FBI to destroy the Panthers. The United Slaves Organization disbanded in 1971 after Karenga, Louis Smith and Luz Maria Tamayo were convicted of felonious assault and false imprisonment for allegedly assaulting and torturing two women from the United Slaves, Deborah Jones & Gail Davis. http://www.dartreview.com/archives/2001/01/15/the_story_of_kwaanza.php In 1975, Karenga was released from California State Prison, with his newly adopted views on Marxism, and re-established the United Slaves Organization (now known as "US") under a new structure. Two years later, in 1977, he formulated a religion called Kawaida, a Swahili term for tradition and reason. Kwanzaa is an adjunct of that religion, and both were intended as an alternative to Christianity. Karenga believed that Christian, Jewish, and Muslim philosophies were mythical and called on African-Americans to reject Jesus (Kwanzaa: Origin, Concepts, Practice, by Maulana Karenga, (1977) pages 14, 23, 24, 27, 44, 45). Central to Karenga's doctrine are the Nguzu Saba, the "Seven Principles of Blackness," which are reinforced during the seven days of Kwanzaa: - Umoja (Unity) - To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race.
- Kujichagulia (Self-Determination) - To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves.
- Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility) - To build and maintain our community together and make our brother's and sister's problems our problems and to solve them together.
- Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics) - To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together.
- Nia (Purpose) - To make our collective vocation the building and development of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
- Kuumba (Creativity) - To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
- Imani (Faith) - To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.
According to the official Kwanzaa website, Karenga went on to earn two doctorates — a Ph.D in political science from United States International University, a liberal education college with campuses in San Diego, Nairobi and Mexico City, and another Ph.D in social ethics from USC. http://www.officialkwanzaawebsite.org/karengabio.html In 1989, Karenga took over as head of the Black Studies Department at California State University in Long Beach http://www.csulb.edu/~d49er/archives/2002/fall/news/v10n20-vis.shtml. Karenga is the author of several books http://www.amazon.com. His Introduction to Black Studies, a comprehensive black studies textbook, is now in its third edition. He was the chairman of the black studies department at California State University, Long Beach from 1989 to 2002. In 1984, he co-hosted the conference out of which grew the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations. In 1995, he sat on the organizing committee and authored the mission statement for the Million Man March. He has studied the philosophy and culture of the Yoruba If and is director of the Kawaida Institute for Pan African Studies http://www.officialkwanzaawebsite.org/karengabio.html. External links Books by Maulana Karenga - Introduction to Black Studies, 2002, 3rd edition, University of Sankore Press, ISBN 0943412234
- Kwanzaa: Origin, Concepts, Practice, 1977, Kawaida Groundwork Committee
Karenga, Maulana
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