THE ROOTS OF KWANZAA- READ IT BEFORE YOU CELEBRATE IT.

From Cleveland's Examiner:

It is the brainchild of African-American radical activist, academic and convicted felon Ron Karenga.

n 1969, two rival radical groups were battling for control of the UCLA black studies program: the Black Panthers and the lesser-known US, or United Slaves, led by Mr. Karenga. Both groups sauntered around campus carrying loaded guns. Perhaps inevitably, violence erupted. As David Horowitz recalls in Radical Son, Black Panther John Higgins was “murdered—along with Al ‘Bunchy’ Carter—on the UCLA campus by members of Ron Karenga’s organization.” After the killing, the FBI infiltrated both groups, and the United Slaves turned to fighting “enemies within.”

The result: two female members were tortured by their “comrades” in May, 1970. Both alledge Mr. Karenga ordered and participated in their assaults.

In 1999, writer Paul Mulshine published his research into Karenga’s violent past on FrontPageMagazine. Mr. Mulshine found a May 14, 1971, Los Angeles Times report of the victims’ testimony, which read:

“The victims said they were living at Karenga’s home when Karenga accused them of trying to [poison] him. . . . When they denied it, allegedly they were beaten with an electrical cord and a hot soldering iron was put in [one victim’s] mouth and against her face. Police were told that one of [the other victim’s] toes was placed in a small vise which was allegedly tightened by one of the defendants. The following day . . . Karenga, holding a gun, threatened to shoot both of them.”

Convicted of felonious assault and false imprisonment, Mr. Karenga was sentenced in 1971 to up to 10 years in prison. “A brief account of the sentencing ran in several newspapers the following day,” Mr. Mulshine writes. “That was apparently the last newspaper article to mention Karenga’s unfortunate habit of doing unspeakable things to black people. After that, the only coverage came from the hundreds of news accounts that depict him as the wonderful man who invented Kwanzaa.”
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“Karenga cobbled together a mishmash of different traditions and languages and blended them with Marxist ideas to reflect a unified African culture that doesn’t exist anywhere,”
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“People think it’s African, but it’s not,” admitted Karenga in a 1978 Washington Post interview. “I put it around Christmas because I knew that’s when a lot of ‘bloods’ [Blacks] would be partying.”