Dr. Maulana Karenga

Remembering and Raising up Nana Randall Robinson: Honoring His Legacy By Continuing It

It was a beautiful and uplifting gathering of all-seasons soldiers, activist intellectuals, movement lawyers, institution-builders, and consistent servants of African peoples, assembled at the African American Cultural Center (Us)’s virtual forum, Sunday, to pay rightful homage to Nana Randall Robinson whose life, work and struggles embodied all these identities and active commitments.  

Resisting the Madness Engulfing America: Defying the Outlawing of Learning and Being Black 

There is an emotional, mental and moral sickness eating at the insides of American society and crushing and killing its most vulnerable victims with various forms of systemic violence whether physical, psychological, social or educational. This societal sickness is rooted in and reflective of the ways the ruling race/class feels and thinks about itself and others different and vulnerable and in the palpable and practiced hatred and hostility directed against them.  

Walking With Nana Woodson in History: Seeking Truth, Justice and Transformation 

    It is the sacred teaching of our honored foremother, Nana Fannie Lou Hamer, that there are two things we all should care about “never to forget where we came from and always praise the bridges that carried us over. And in revisiting this teaching and our homage to Nana Dr. Carter G. Woodson, we seek to honor this sacred obligation. Again, so we might remember and raise up, pursue and do the good. For he is indeed one of those mighty bridges who taught us where we came from and offered us an unbreakable bridge to carry us

Centering King in the Context of Community: Considering the People Who Produced Him

Every holiday of every hero or heroine we celebrate is, at the same time and in equal measure and meaning, a celebration of our people, indeed a celebration of ourselves. Indeed, whether we believe they are chosen and raised up among us by heaven or history or both, they find their foundation and footing, their mission and meaning in the lived experience, the cultural values and practices and the historical and ongoing struggles of our people.  

The Ethics and Essentiality of Struggle: Ancestral Insights From Our Ancient Sacred Texts 

One of the most critical tasks of our times is to reaffirm, deepen and expand our culture of struggle as a people, with its rich talkings and sacred teachings and its lived and uplifting experiences of “storm riding,” “blooming in the whirlwind,” and daring to “specialize in the wholly impossible” in the midst of the most savage and brutal situations of oppression history had to offer. Indeed, it is as ethically imperative as it is compellingly essential, for it is an anchoring, defining and ongoing project and practice of constantly struggling for African and human good and the well-being of the world.