Maulana Karenga (born Ronald McKinley Everett on July 14, 1941, and also known as Ron Karenga and as M. Ron Karenga) is an African American author, political activist, and college professor best known as the creator of Kwanzaa. Karenga was active in the Black Power movement in the 1960s and 1970s and founded the black nationalist group Us Organization which remains active to this day promoting the philosophy of Kawaida. Kawaida is a philosophy based on social and cultural change.
Karenga is the former Chairman of the Africana studies Department at California State University, Long Beach, a position he held from 1989 to 2002. 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 third edition.
Karenga founded the Organization Us, a Cultural Black Nationalist group, in 1965. 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.
Karenga was born on a farm in Parsonsburg, Maryland, the fourteenth child and seventh son. He moved to California in the late 1950s to attend UCLA, but attended Los Angeles City College (LACC) to establish residence. There, he became the first African-American president of the student body. After graduation from LACC, he went to University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where he received his B.A. and M.A. in political science with a specialization in African studies. (Maulana Karenga, Los Angeles: UCLA Center for African American Studies, Oral History Program, 2002)
He was awarded his first Ph.D. in 1976 from United States International University (now known as Alliant International University) for a 170-page dissertation entitled Afro-American Nationalism: Social Strategy and Struggle for Community. 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 was influenced in the creation of his ethos for Us by Malcolm X.
"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. And US saw it, when I founded it, as the sons and daughters of Malcolm, and as an heir to his legacy." ...Maulana Karenga
During the 60s, Us became a target of the FBI COINTELPRO and was put on a series of lists describing it as dangerous, revolutionary and committed to armed struggle in the Black Power Movement. 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.
Similar to the Black Panthers in their claim to be a revolutionary vanguard, Us at first cooperated with the Panthers and other community groups in Black United Front efforts. However, there evolved ideological differences that the FBI through its COINTELPRO began to increase and aggravate, leading to physical conflicts. Tactics used to foment and aggravate conflict between Us and the Panthers included poison-pen letters, defamatory cartoons, agent provocateurs, creating suspicion of members of each organization as agents, and actually shooting at and attacking members of both groups and blaming it on the other.
This heightened level of conflict eventually led to a shoot-out at UCLA in 1969 in which two Panthers were killed and a Simba was shot in the back. Community efforts to resolve the conflict, both before and after the shooting, were conducted by the Black Congress of Los Angeles, but were unsuccessful. The FBI and local police used this state of things to further suppress both groups driving Us members and Panthers underground and in exile and putting them in prison under questionable circumstances. As noted above, Karenga argues that he was a victim of these tactics and that his imprisonment was political. Other scholars have raised similar questions.
In 1971, Karenga "was sentenced to one to ten years in prison on counts of felonious assault and false imprisonment". One of the victims gave testimony of how Karenga tortured her and another woman whom he had accused of attempting to assassinate him.
In 1975, with newly-adopted views on Marxism, Karenga was released from California State Prison, and re-established the Us organization under a new structure. One year later, he was awarded his first doctorate. In 1977, he formulated a set of principles called Kawaida, a Swahili term for tradition. Karenga called on African Americans to adopt his secular humanism and reject other practices as mythical (Karenga 1977, pp. 14, 23, 24, 27, 44—5).
Central to Karenga's doctrine are the Nguzo 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.
In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Maulana Karenga on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.
