Min. Malcolm X

The Moral Meaning of Our Struggle: Saving America From Its Trumpian Self

Dr. Maulana KarengaOctober 29, 2020

During the civil rights phase of the Black Freedom Movement, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) chose as its motto: “To Save the Soul of America.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., SCLC’s principal theorist and social philosopher, explained that it was really to reaffirm that “America would never be free or saved from itself” until African Americans are freed “completely from the shackles they still wear.” He said it was a question of concern for the integrity and life of America. And as I read it, it is a question concerning the very life and death of the people of America, caught up, at that time, in a monstrously immoral war against the Vietnamese people and wasting lives and resources better spent on the well-being of the American people.

Dr. Maulana Karenga

Us’ 55 Years of Unbudging Blackness: Africa As Our Moral Ideal

Dr. Maulana KarengaSeptember 10, 2020

Since I first conceived Us as a vanguard organization and called its founding meeting in the wake of the August Revolt and the martyrdom of Min. Malcolm X, we have been committed to three overarching and interrelated goals: cultural revolution, Black liberation and the radical reconception and reconstruction of American society.

Dr. Maulana Karenga

Lifting Up Lowery, Vivian and Lewis: Living the Legacy, Freeing the People

Dr. Maulana KarengaJuly 23, 2020

Clearly, there are several lessons to be gleaned from the legacy of these freedom warriors and workers for a new society and world. And the first is to rightfully locate them in Black history among their people, our people in the midst of an unfinished and ongoing Black freedom struggle. Indeed, there can be no correct understanding, appropriate appreciation or honest emulation of their lives and the lives of all those who preceded them and made them and us possible and of those who were their co-combatants, unless we place them all in the context of their people, our people, Black people and our struggle.

Dr. Maulana Karenga Opinion

Achieving Justice for George Floyd: Radically Reimagining and Rebuilding America

Dr. Maulana KarengaJuly 16, 2020

Indeed, it is a clear and constant given that if we are to achieve real justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks and all the victims of this racist violent democracy called America, to paraphrase Min. Malcolm, then we have two interrelated objectives that must be achieved. They are: radically reimagining and rebuilding America; and sustaining the struggle on every level which will make this possible. And key to all of this is holding the ground we’ve gained, building on what we have and fighting fiercely to move forward, day by day, year by year and battle by battle until victory is clearly won.

Dr. Maulana Karenga

Taking Down Flags and Tearing Down Walls: Some Seriously Needed Distinctions

Dr. Maulana KarengaJuly 9, 2020

This is a revisiting of an ongoing conversation beginning in 2015 about taking down symbols of oppression, especially Confederate flags, but also statues, murals and all public signs, symbols and celebrations of our domination, deprivation and degradation as a people and other people of color. My argument here, as then, is that these acts are necessary, but not sufficient, an important start, but not the end of the long, difficult and dangerous journey to a radical reconception and reconstruction of the source of these racist symbols, signs and celebrations, i.e., society itself.

Dr. Maulana Karenga Opinion

Considering King In Critical Times: Daring to Oppose War and Practice Peace

Dr. Maulana KarengaJanuary 16, 2020

As we weave our way through the daily dose of lies and illusions, hype, hatred and hypocrisy from the White House, we must constantly question and be actively concerned about the relative sanity and real danger of those who continuously fake “imminent threats” and cry wolf to make war, and then try to wash away their sins of savagery with the dishonest indictment and blood of others.

Dr. Maulana Karenga Opinion

Essential Teachings of Messenger Muhammad: A Careful Kawaida Reading

Dr. Maulana KarengaOctober 17, 2019

In re-remembrance and reflection on the Hon. Elijah Muhammad’s contribution to our self-consciousness and self-assertion as a people in that critical time of turning and overturning we call the Sixties.This is a careful Kawaida reading of some of the essential teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad in rightful remembrance and respect of his life and work in the wilderness of oppression and illusion in this country, in this the month of his birth, (October 7, 1897—February 25, 1975).

Dr. Maulana Karenga Opinion

Remembering the Watts Revolt: A Shared Condition, Consciousness and Commitment

Dr. Maulana KarengaAugust 29, 2019

The Anniversary of the 1965 Watts Revolt occurs in the context of a larger history of Black struggle, sacrifices and achievements: the assassination, sacrifice and martyrdom of Min. Malcolm X; the Selma March; the Voting Rights Act; the founding of our organization Us and the African American Cultural Center; and the introduction of the Black value system, the Nguzo Saba, which became the core values of the pan-African holiday Kwanzaa and of Kawaida, a major Movement philosophy of life and struggle.

Dr. Maulana Karenga Opinion

Justice, Reaffirmation and Resistance: Advancing An African American Ethical Agenda

Dr. Maulana KarengaMarch 14, 2019

In this era of political madness, mean-spiritedness, racial and religious scapegoating, continued and expanding police violence, obscene inequities in wealth and power, mass incarceration, extensive and needless poverty and proposals for mass deportations, immigration bans, an apartheid wall and national registries of suspected and stigmatized peoples, there is an urgent need for an African American communal voice of moral courage, political reason, and expanded righteous and relentless resistance. In a word, there is a pressing need for an African American ethical agenda speaking to the critical issues of our times.

Dr. Maulana Karenga Opinion

Malcolm X and the Ethics of Martyrdom: Witness, Service, Struggle and Sacrifice

Dr. Maulana KarengaFebruary 21, 2019

Malcolm tells us in his Autobiography that he felt and hoped that his “life’s account, read objectively. . .might prove to be a testimony of some social value.” And surely, it is a testimony of great social value. Indeed, it is both testimony and testament, righteous witness and a sacred will, awesome evidence and instruction on how we can live our lives, and if need be, give them up with the unwavering commitment and uncompromising courage Malcolm modelled and mirrored for us. Malcolm, honored teacher of the liberating truth, thus taught us how to live and die, and even before his death, he had already given his whole life to his people, his faith and the struggle. It was again one of his defining features which he described as “the one hundred percent dedication I have to whatever I believe in.”

Dr. Maulana Karenga Opinion

Following Our Foremother Fannie Lou Hamer: Courageously Questioning America

Dr. Maulana KarengaOctober 18, 2018

In these uncertain and unsettling times of the self-silencing of the lambs, the fearful and fatigued surrender of summer soldiers, and the out-of-control hate-filled howling of ice age winter wolves, lessons and models of struggle and resistance from the sacred narrative of our history are both appropriate and compelling.

Dr. Maulana Karenga Opinion

Us, The Movement and Memory: In the Winds and Scales of History

Dr. Maulana KarengaSeptember 6, 2018

But if there is any legacy or uplifting lessons left by the 60s, it is that we must resist these new forms of unfreedom and falsification of history and continue to wage struggles of liberation on every level of life. For these struggles are clearly the indispensable way we understand, free and fulfill ourselves and the aspirations of our ancestors. Indeed, these are struggles demanded by our inherent right to freedom, our natural need for justice and our irrepressible longing for a liberated life. And it is a struggle for and longed for life that yields ordinary and special spaces in which the human spirit is nurtured and constantly renewed, and we and other human beings know ourselves as sacred and at the center and subject of every day and hour of history we make.