By Dr. Segun Shabaka – Part I
On Sunday afternoon, September 7, the Organization Us celebrated the 60th anniversary of its founding. This historic event took place at the organization’s headquarters, The African American Cultural Center, in South Central Los Angeles, California. This community has been its home and the center of its work and struggle since its inception. The Organization Us was founded on September 7, 1965, when Dr. Maulana Karenga called its founding meeting with seven other brothers and sisters at his home. It is one of only a few Black Power organizations from the 1960s that remains intact and active while still unapologetic and unbudging in its Blackness. We have to ask ourselves why?
The answer is in the three characteristics that defines the Organization Us: Leadership, Doctrine and Organization. The leadership speaks to the central vision, values and work of Dr. Karenga and the leadership group called the executive circle; the doctrine is Kawaida, a philosophy of life, work and struggle; and the organization is the advocates(members) and their relations and practices directed towards “cultural revolution within and political revolution without, resulting in a radical transformation of self, society and the world”.
Seba Dr. Maulana Karenga, the organization’s founder and chair, was thanked by many throughout the celebration for the positive effects he, the Organization Us, the Nguzo Saba and Kawaida have had on their lives and the overall movement for African and human freedom and good. Having joined the Black Freedom Movement in the 1960’s, sixty years after he remains a force in local, national and international struggles of African people.
Dr. Karenga is currently the Chair of Us and the National Association of Kawaida Organizations(NAKO), the executive director of the African American Cultural Center and the Black Community Clergy and Labor Alliance(BCCLA).Moreover he also serves as professor and chair of the Department of Africana Studies at California State University, Long Beach.
A PowerPoint presentation on the organizations’ history and contributions to the local, national and global Pan-African struggle was given by Dr. Karenga with input from current and former members during and after the presentation.
Among their contributions that formed the foundation and framework of their transformative work and struggle are Dr. Karenga’s creating and the Us members’ teaching, practicing and promoting Kawaida philosophy and its guiding principles, The Nguzo Saba (Seven Principles – Umoja- Unity, Kujichagulia – Self-Determination, Ujima – Collective Work and Responsibility, Ujamaa – Cooperative Economics, Nia – Purpose, Kuumba – Creativity and Imani – Faith) and the Pan-African holiday Kwanzaa celebrated by millions of African peoples throughout the global African community on every continent, uniting African peoples in a way no other principles and practices do. It brings together African people from December 26 thru January 1 from all walks of life, faiths, cultural and religious backgrounds in every major African community from various corners of the world.
The Us organization was born out of fires of the Black Power phase (1965 to 1975)of the Black Freedom Movement of the 1960s after the Civil Rights phase (1955 to 1965) exhausted itself. Under Dr. Karenga’s leadership the Organization Us has played a major role, directly and/or indirectly, in the major movements over the last six decades, e.g.: all three Black Power Conferences (Dr. Karenga was the leading theorist and a principal organizer), the independent Black school movement(Council of Independent Black Institutions/CIBI) which used and taught the Nguzo Saba), The anti-Apartheid and African Liberation Movements, the Black Studies Movement (Dr. Karenga is one of the founding scholars of the discipline of Black Studies and wrote Introduction to Black Studies/IBS, one the most widely used text in the field), Black independent politics of the National Black Assembly, Ancient Egyptians Studies (The Organization Us initiated the call and hosted in Los Angeles the founding conference of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations’ (ASCAC) 1984, giving it its name, logo, and writing and publishing its initial literature, and introducing a new field in Black Studies, Ma’atian Ethics.
In addition, Us has made important contributions to the development of African cultural festivals, rites of passage programs, the Reparations Movement, Black liberation theology etc.
Despite the revisionist history in circulation, some of the major Black Power organizations and leaders of that era that adopted Kawaida and the Nguzo Saba, which guided and aided them when they made their most profound and significant contributions to the Black Liberation Struggle, were: the Committee for a Unified Newark (CFUN) under Amiri Baraka; The East Cultural and Educational Center for People of African Descent, under the leader of Jitu Weusi (This writer was a part of the EAST organization almost from its beginning, first as a volunteer, then a teacher and administrator and later as its executive director until its demise); Ahidiana Institute, under Kalamu Ya Salaam; and, the Institute of Positive Education/IPE under Dr. Haki Madhubuti, (This year, Dr. Madhubuti and IPE is celebrating its 58 anniversary). These groups were the strongest Kawaida institution builders among many others.
What made these and many other Kawaida institution builders so unique was that they built powerful independent, self-determining and self-reliant institutions of service and struggle while following Kawaida’s model of drawing on the best of African history and culture as the central source of paradigms. In addition, each of these Kawaida based institutions had a profound effect on the local level with full time schools and daycares, coops, cultural institutions, music and concert venues, community development programs, newspapers, publishing houses and other services. And they also worked together in several organization structures under the Kawaida concept of “operational unity, unity without uniformity, and unity in principle, purpose and practice.” Some of these formations were the Congress of African People (CAP – a united front of Kawaida organizations), The African Liberation Support Committee (ALSC), the National Black Assembly, CIBI, among others.