US Organization - Foundation

Foundation

After the death of Malcolm X, Maulana Karenga started a discussion group called the "circle of seven." This included Malcolm X's cousin Hakim Jamal, who created a magazine entitled "US," a pun on the phrase "us and them" and the accepted abbreviation of "United States." This promoted the idea of black cultural unity as a distinct national identity. Jamal and Karenga joined together and founded the US Organization. They published a magazine Message to the Grassroot in 1966, in which Karenga was listed as chairman and Jamal as founder of the new group.

Its aim was to promote African-American cultural unity. Haiba Karenga and Dorothy Jamal, the wives of the two founders, ran the organization's "US School of Afroamerican Culture", to educate children with the group's ideals. However, their husbands soon differed about how to achieve the group's aims. Jamal argued that the ideas of Malcolm X should be the main ideological model for the group, while Karenga wished to root black Americans in African culture. Karenga became the main active force in the group, organizing projects such as teaching Swahili and promoting traditional African rituals. Jamal believed that these had no relevance to modern African-American life, so he left "US" to establish the rival Malcolm X Foundation, based in Compton, California. Karenga became the driving force behind "US."

Karenga's ideas culminated in the creation of the Kwanzaa festival in 1966, designed as the first specifically African-American holiday. It was to be celebrated over the Christmas/New Year period. Karenga said his goal was to "give Blacks an alternative to the existing holiday and give Blacks an opportunity to celebrate themselves and history, rather than simply imitate the practice of the dominant society." He summed up the group's ideals in the principles: Unity (Umoja), Self-Determination (Kujichagulia), Collective Work and Responsibility (Ujima), Cooperative Economics (Ujamaa), Purpose (Nia), Creativity (Kuumba), and Faith (Imani).