Section One: Where the Story Begins
For many people, Kwanzaa is presented as a harmless cultural celebration rooted in African values. But for some Black elders who lived through the late 1960s, the origin story carries deep pain and unresolved anger. Kwanzaa was created in 1966 by Ron Karenga, who was also known earlier as Ron Everett. The earliest organizing meetings took place in Leimert Park on Crenshaw Boulevard, at a time when Black political organizing was under intense surveillance. This was the height of COINTELPRO, when the FBI and LAPD were actively infiltrating Black movements. Many activists from that era believe Karenga’s organization operated in ways that fed information into those systems. Whether framed as collaboration, manipulation, or reckless leadership, the consequences were deadly. For those who lost friends and comrades, this history is not academic; it is personal.
Section Two: Violence Within the Movement
The conflict between Karenga’s US Organization and the Black Panther Party is one of the most tragic chapters of that era. At University of California, Los Angeles, Panthers Bunchy Carter and John Huggins were killed in 1969 during a campus confrontation. Many historians agree that federal agencies exploited and intensified existing rivalries, but community members also hold Karenga’s leadership responsible for escalating tensions. Beyond political violence, Karenga was later convicted of felony assault and false imprisonment involving Black women within his organization. He served a brief prison sentence before returning to public life. For many elders, that swift rehabilitation felt like erasure of harm rather than accountability. The wounds left behind never closed.
Section Three: From Prison to Professor
What continues to shock people is not only what happened, but what happened afterward. After serving just over a year in prison, Karenga returned to public life and became a respected academic. He later secured a tenured position in the California State University system. To some, this looked like redemption. To others, it looked like protection. Survivors and witnesses felt that voices of the harmed were ignored while the narrative was sanitized. The transformation from militant leader to cultural authority happened without public reckoning. That silence is what fuels continued rejection. For people who watched friends die and movements collapse, celebration feels inappropriate without truth.
Section Four: Why Kwanzaa Is Not Neutral
For critics, rejecting Kwanzaa is not a rejection of African culture or Black unity. It is a refusal to separate tradition from its creator. Symbols carry the weight of their origins, especially when those origins involve betrayal and loss. Between 1965 and 1968, Black communities were building schools, clinics, food programs, and political consciousness. Many believe those efforts were systematically disrupted from within and without. Kwanzaa, for these elders, is inseparable from that disruption. Celebrating it feels like honoring a period marked by manipulation and bloodshed. This perspective does not demand agreement, but it does demand acknowledgment.
Summary
Kwanzaa’s origins are not universally experienced as empowering or unifying. For some Black elders, its founder’s actions during a violent and heavily surveilled era make the celebration deeply troubling. Deaths, internal conflict, and perceived collaboration with state repression left lasting scars. The later mainstream acceptance of its founder intensified feelings of injustice. This history explains why some refuse to participate.
Conclusion
Black history is not singular, clean, or comfortable. It carries contradictions, betrayals, and unresolved grief alongside brilliance and resistance. For those who lived through the late 1960s, memory is not symbolic, it is embodied. Refusing to celebrate Kwanzaa, for them, is not bitterness; it is fidelity to the dead. Understanding this stance requires listening without defensiveness. Healing begins not with forced unity, but with truth.