Kwanzaa: A Celebration, a Controversy

Although only 36 years old, it is a cultural feast celebrated by millions and often mentioned in the same breath as Christmas and Hanukkah.
Yet even as the number of families honoring the fairly young black tradition of Kwanzaa grows, there are some who view its founder–Maulana Ron Karenga–with suspicion.
They remember his controversial role in the black power movement of the 1960s, when he was leader of a Los Angeles-based militant cultural organization called US, and his conviction for ordering the beating of a female US member.
”If somebody sends me a Kwanzaa card, I just tear it up,” said Elaine Brown, a former Black Panther whose 1994 book ”A Taste of Power” describes the Jan. 17, 1969, shooting deaths of two Panthers by US members at the University of California, Los Angeles. ”I am so unforgiving but I don’t make any apologies for it.”
Karenga and US first gained notoriety during that incident, when US members confronted and shot Black Panthers John Huggins and Alprentice ”Bunchy” Carter at Campbell Hall. Two men were arrested in the shootings but they later escaped from prison.
Two years after the UCLA episode, Karenga was convicted in the beating of a female US member, and he served four years in prison in San Luis Obispo, Calif.
During his years behind bars, US, which originally stood for United Slaves, temporarily disbanded. But Karenga’s seven-day celebration of high-minded African principles continued.
It grew after Karenga, who was released from prison in 1975, began to energetically proselytize the feast. He earned a doctorate in the social sciences and joined the faculty of California State University, Long Beach.
A network of black scholars now view Karenga as an icon who gave the world a cultural gift that ranks with jazz.
”Kwanzaa is right up there as one of the evidences of the creative genius of our people,” said Willie Houston, director of the African American Museum of Nassau County in Hempstead, N.Y. ”You talk about originality, you talk about a people finding their way, Kwanzaa has gone a long way toward showing us where we are and where we come from and what we must do.”
Andrew P. Jackson, executive director of the Langston Hughes Community Library and Cultural Center in the New York City borough of Queens, said: ”He started something that turned out to be a revolutionary cultural practice. Once practiced in small circles in Southern California, it now has 30 million people around the world practicing it.”
Kwanzaa is based on seven principles–Umoja (unity); Kujichagulia (self-determination); Ujima (collective work and responsibility); Ujamaa (cooperative economics); Nia (purpose); Kuumba (creativity); and Imani (faith).
Adherents say the principles, known collectively as the Nguzo Saba, are a kind of road map to spiritual and economic salvation, a psychic prescription for suffering caused by three centuries of slavery. During a Kwanzaa celebration, a leader will pour a libation in honor of the ancestors of those present. There are also talks or performances stressing Kwanzaa’s principles, one for each day between Dec. 26 and Jan. 1. Someone, usually a young person, will light candles for each day of the celebration.
Kwanzaa practitioners of 30 years ago were dashiki-wearing ”cultural nationalists” who sported huge Afros or bald heads and latched onto things African with a spiritual hunger. In a humorously candid admission in 1978, Karenga said he created Kwanzaa with such Afro-centric people in mind.
”People think it’s African. But it’s not. I wanted to give black people a holiday of their own. So I came up with Kwanzaa. I said it was African because you know black people in this country wouldn’t celebrate it if they knew it was American,” Karenga told a national conference of black writers gathered at Howard University.
But the real growth in the celebration of Kwanzaa in recent years has been among the middle class.
”More middle class people celebrate Kwanzaa than any other segment,” said Cedric McClester, author of ”Kwanzaa: Everything You Always Wanted to Know but Didn’t Know Where to Ask.”
McClester is an organizer of Kwanzaa Fest, an exposition held in New York in early- and mid-December and attended by thousands of blacks.
Segun Shabaka, New York chairman of Karenga’s National Association of Kawaida Organizations, said Kwanzaa, which very loosely translated from Swahili means the first harvest, is about honoring one’s roots and about simplicity.
”The gifts should be mainly to children and they should include a book and a heritage symbol” such as a work of art, said Shabaka, a historian and adjunct professor at various colleges, including Medgar Evers.
Shabaka defends Karenga and Kwanzaa, saying both have made major impacts on black lives. Karenga did not return numerous phone calls seeking comment for this article.
To Louise Leslie of Queens and her relatives, the controversy over Karenga means nothing. For 10 years she and her extended family have celebrated Kwanzaa as a bond between themselves and their deceased ancestors.
”My great-grandmother was a slave and pregnant with my mother’s mother when she was a slave,” said Leslie, a retired accountant.
This year, as in past years, she and her husband Raymond, a retired city corrections officer, will celebrate Kwanzaa, with the largest gathering on Jan. 1, when children perform and receive gifts.
”The whole day revolves around the children,” Louise Leslie said, speaking of her grandchildren and other youngsters.
Generally officiating at the family’s big Kwanzaa feast is Langston Hughes library director Jackson, who also goes by his adopted African name, Sekou Molefi Baako.
Kamazima Lwiza, an associate professor of physical oceanography at Stony Brook University on Long Island, N.Y., said he never knew about Kwanzaa in his native Tanzania. But he celebrates it regularly now in America.
Lwiza speaks Swahili, the language Karenga used in developing Kwanzaa, and he said that the Kwanzaa events he has attended, especially those that feature dancers, have a special meaning for him. They remind him of harvest feasts back in his homeland and make him feel a special connection with blacks.