Maulana Karenga

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Maulana Ndabezitha Karenga, born July 14, 1941, is an African-American scholar, campaigner, and author best known for Kwanzaa's pan-African and African-American holiday.

Karenga was instrumental in the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s and co-founded the black nationalist group US Union with Hakim Jamal. Karenga was born in Parsonsburg, Maryland, to an African-American family, and spent time at Los Angeles City College and the University of California.

He was involved in activism and joined the Congress of Racial Equality during his undergraduate years.

He became involved in violent clashes with the Black Panther Party as a result of his activism.

He was found guilty of felonious assault and false imprisonment in 1971.

He was detained in California Men's Colony before receiving parole in 1975.

He earned his PhD shortly afterward and began a career in academia shortly afterward.

Early life

Karenga was born in Parsonsburg, Maryland, 13th child and seventh son in the family. His father, a tenant farmer and Baptist minister, sent the family to work fields under an effective sharecropping scheme. Karenga came from Los Angeles in 1959, joining his older brother who was a tutor there, and attending Los Angeles City College. He became involved in civil rights organizations such as Racial Equality and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and was elected as the first African-American student president by LACC's first African-American student president.

After graduating from the University of California, Los Angeles, he earned a BA and MA degree in political science. He researched Swahili, Arabic, and other African-related topics. Councill Taylor, a Jamaican anthropologist and Negritudist, who criticized the Eurocentric view of alien cultures as primitive, was one of his influences at UCLA. During this period, he adopted the name Karenga (Swahili for "keeper of tradition") and Maulana (Swahili-Arabic for "master teacher") during the tense period.

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Later career

Karenga re-established the US Organization under new leadership after his parole.

In 1976, he was awarded his first Ph.D. degree from United States International University (now Alliant International University) for a 170-page dissertation titled "Afro-American Nationalism: Social Policy and Struggle for Civility." He established Kawaida, a Swahili term for normal, in 1977. Karenga urged African-Americans to adopt his religious faith and reject other beliefs as mythical.

He was also 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 that was first published in 1982. He is also responsible for co-hosting the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations in 1984.

In 1994, he was granted a second Ph.D. in social ethics from the University of Southern California for an 803-page dissertation titled "Maat, the moral ideal in ancient Egypt: a study of classical African ethics." In 1995, he served on the organizing committee and wrote the Million Man March's mission statement.

At the 2001 funeral service of New Black Panther Party leader Khalid Abdul Muhammad, Karenga expressed eulogy, thanking his leadership and dedication to black liberation. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Maulana Karenga on his list of the 100 Greatest African Americans.

Karenga chairs the Africana Studies Department at California State University, Long Beach, as of 2021.

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