But the Durham Herald-Sun gives it a shout-out anyway. In case you didn’t know (and most people don’t, it seems–anyway, not the Herald-Sun), Kwanzaa was founded by a man with a nigh unspeakable past.
Maulana Karenga, formerly known as Ron Everett, recently appeared at NC Central University to help celebrate the holiday he invented and hawk a few books. Besides inventing Kwanzaa, he was the founder of the organization United Slaves, a militant black advocacy group that rivaled the Black Panthers and achieved infamy for murdering two Black Panthers in 1969. Karenga himself gained notoriety (and a felony sentence) for falsely imprisoning and torturing two women in the early seventies.
After his prison sentence, he joined the faculty of the Black Studies department at California State University, Long Beach. Which says ________ about American higher education.
The holiday itself doesn’t have much in the way of merit, either. The Nguzo Saba, the seven principles of Kwanzaa, are a rather transparent call for black separatism and Marxism.
Hopefully the Herald-Sun will at least offer a disclaimer about this in the future.
