FIGHTING FOR US: Maulana Karenga, the US Organization and Black Cultural Nationalism

Though with each passing holiday season Kwanzaa becomes ever-more integrated into the pan-denominational celebrations beloved of greeting card companies, its origins in the tumult of the Black Power struggles of the 1960s and early '70s are little known. Likewise, the history of the "US" organization, whose achievements in the years between the Watts riots and the second Nixon administration include the invention of Kwanzaa, remain obscure to many. Using both a wealth of archival material and interviews with many of the individuals involved, UCLA historian Brown has written a detailed and sober account of a complex, contentious and sometimes lurid series of events. Founded in 1965 by Maulana Karenga (né Ron Everett), US's carefully articulated doctrine of racial and community empowerment and renewed African spirituality exerted a nationwide influence out of proportion to its modest size. If much of US's rhetoric was patriarchal and nationalist, Karenga's early ability to move among and bring together competing interests was considerable, and during an era when enormous social changes seemed imminent, his personal prestige was great. Sadly, this led to the cult of personality that became part of US's rapid downfall. Harassed by Hoover's FBI—which expertly exploited already violent rivalries with organizations like the Black Panthers—and torn apart by internal dissension, US came to an end amid kidnapping, torture and prison sentences. If Brown's otherwise excellent account has a flaw, it is in his understandable if sometimes over-scrupulous avoidance of his material's dramatic potential. But as a revelatory account of a tragic and little-known phase of American history, Fighting for US is of enormous and permanent value. (Aug.)