The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones (71 page)

CFUN's first project was to hold a Black Convention in '68 and then run candidates out of that convention for City Council. (The last day of that unsuccessful “Peace & Power” campaign is recorded in a film made by Jim Hinton called
The New Ark
.) Karenga came to town especially to help with the campaign. It was he who named the campaign “Peace & Power,” hoping to capitalize on the peace movement that was one aspect of the anti-Vietnam War protests, as well as the Black Power movement. The visual symbols were a red ankh (peace) and a black fist (power).

Our first candidates lost and the loss brought us all down, but it was good experience. We learned a lot in that campaign and got ready soon
after to go again. Nineteen seventy was the mayoral election and all the councilmen's terms would be up. Our weekly circle meetings took on even more intensity, since now we had gotten our feet wet and knew what to expect.

Karenga's influence came to dominate the entire CFUN, which alienated a few of the older political brothers in the United Brothers, all of whom would certainly not become Karenga cultural nationalists.

During this period I got deeply involved with Kawaida. Although, as Karenga was to complain in a note to himself, the things we did were never absolute copies of his Los Angeles operation. He wrote that I was a “revisionist.” But many of us now, and certainly all of the younger people in CFUN, began to wear African clothes. Dashikis for the men, bubbas and lappas and geles for the women. The united front, which still remains the fundamental weapon of struggle for the oppressed black nation, was eroded in one sense by the gradual domination by cultural nationalism in CFUN, though for a while our numbers steadily increased.

I learned the voluminous pages of Karenga's Kawaida doctrine, the Nguzo Saba, the five of this and seven of that and three of the other we had to memorize. We learned the basic Swahili vocabulary that identified the organization. But I had no intention of shaving my head. The L.A. people wore the olive-drab dashiki; in the East we wore the normal multicolored West African dashiki.

The doctrine was organized so it dealt, presumably, with every part of life. And even though I was heavily influenced by Karenga and Kawaida, there were certain parts of his doctrine which made no sense to me, so I did not impose them on the Newark people. This was especially true of the parts of the doctrine dealing with women. The heavy male chauvinism that I already suffered from was now formally added to. Karenga's doctrine gave male chauvinism a revolutionary legitimacy. The doctrine said there was no such thing as equality between men and women, “they were complementary.” This was a typical Karenga manipulation of words. When brothers went by, the women were supposed to “salimu” or “submit,” crossing their arms on their breasts and bowing slightly. We changed this so that they did this only for the organization's officers.

Karenga also had wild stuff in his doctrine about how women ought to dress and how their clothing should always be “suggestive.” He said they should show flesh to intrigue men and not be covered up so much. I could never adjust to Karenga's thing with women either on paper or in the flesh. He was always making “sexy” remarks to women, calling them “freaks”
and commenting loudly on their physical attributes. In L.A., Karenga even sanctioned “polygamy” and was rumored, himself, to have pulled many of the women in the L.A. organization.

What stopped us from getting too far out in Kawaida was my wife, Amina, who not only waged a constant struggle against my personal and organizational male chauvinism, but secretly in her way was constantly undermining Karenga's influence, figuring, I guess, that I would not come up with as much nuttiness disguised as revolution as he, though I did my share. (This is the reason that the work of uninformed “observers” like Michelle Wallace, who was by her own admission in private school or away in Paris during this period of the Black Liberation movement, shows up so shabbily. To suggest, as Wallace does in her
Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman
, that the black women inside the various organizations of the Black Liberation movement did nothing but acquiesce to our male chauvinism during the '60s is simply white feminist chauvinism. The sisters in the organizations I was in fought us tooth and nail about our chauvinism in much more forcible and effective ways than the middle-class sistren at Ms. magazine could ever begin to imagine.)

All the black women in those militant black organizations deserve the highest praise. Not only did they stand with us shoulder to shoulder against black people's enemies, they also had to go toe to toe with us, battling day after day against our insufferable male chauvinism. And then later, when there was a lull in the movement, those women who were away in some school getting Ph.D.s or off in Europe soaking up “culture” or in some bohemian place learning how to make narcissistic art can return and get to be big deals running on about what the movement really was about. What bullshit! But predictable bullshit.

The US organization started out as community activists but gradually they became more and more just cultural nationalists putting out an abstract doctrine of “blackness.” I myself became one of the chief proselytizers of Kawaida. Actually, if it were not for CFUN and the later Congress of Afrikan Peoples (CAP), the Kawaida doctrine, the Seven Principles, and the holiday Kwanzaa would never have been as widely known as they are. Certainly it was not through any kind of community organizing on Karenga's part, though he did have a dramatic, humorous, very charismatic way of speaking and carrying himself. And his doctrine did carry orderly methods of approaching community organizing and they sometimes worked. I wrote a couple of pamphlets explaining Karenga's doctrine which were well circulated. And because he did push tight organization and military-like rank
and discipline, the US cadre did seem much more “together” than most of the other militants, especially around things like the Black Power Conferences. During those years Kawaida was very influential, and it became even more influential through CFUN and CAP.

The people functioning in CFUN as cultural nationalists began to think of themselves as US organization members on the East Coast. Balozi and Mfundishi pushed a general US line as well, though Balozi had a great store of “homespunism” that he pushed equally hard. Mfundishi was really the strong silent type and was content to walk around and be worshiped in silence. Mfundishi had about him that arrogance that only men skilled in the martial arts, especially those of other nationalities pretending to be Orientals, could have. But he was especially skilled in martial arts, a sensei, or teacher.

One event will show how skilled and dangerous Mfundishi was. He was walking with me one afternoon on the way from the CFUN building. (We had moved into an abandoned Red Feather building just down the block from the Spirit House. All we had to do was pay maintenance costs and fuel, since the city had taken it over. We painted the interior red, black, and green, put large posters and photographs of Afro-American and African leaders on the walls. It was three stories — downstairs for our weekly programs, called Soul Sessions, like Karenga's on the Coast, the second floor for our administrative offices and my own office, and the third floor for other officers in the organization's offices and the training area.) We had to go to the Hall of Records for something. We had crossed the street and were walking up the diagonal path which leads past the courthouse and on up across High Street to the building.

As we started up the path, we spied the fat, bulky Imperiale coming down the courthouse stairs and headed toward us. Part of Imperiale's rep rested on the tale that he was a black belt karate man and was deadly with his hands. He might have had something going for him Korean karate style with his huge meaty hams at the end of his arms, but Mfundishi was an artist. We walked directly toward each other, Imperiale from one direction, Mfundishi and I from the other. When Imperiale got perhaps a couple feet from us, Mfundishi stepped with one stride between Imperiale and me and, turning his body at the same time to face Imperiale, was no longer at my side but jam up in Imperial's chest, face to face. Imperial's face clouded like someone had shit in it. Mfundishi was just a little lower than Imperiale, he had come up and with his one sleek stride was poised just a
little under Ant-knee's chest, crouched and at the ready. It was impressive; certainly Imperiale was impressed.

Mfundishi's thing, it seemed to me, was that the martial arts was the deciding factor in the black struggle, as if guns had never been invented. All the brothers in the organization took Yangumi (“the way of the thinking fist”), and Mfundishi imposed a harsh discipline and a hard training regimen. The BCD brothers were really being trained for martial arts tournaments rather than political organization.

Balozi, on the other hand, sought to be the Karenga-like figure, with a constant stream of jokes, mainly about “the nigger,” such as “Nigger need to be locked up for his own good.” So, for a time, there were three leaders of the CFUN: Balozi, who was supposed to be the political leader; Mfundishi, head of the troops (Karenga called them Simba, the young lions); and I, termed “the Spiritual Leader.”

We functioned together for a while but before 1968 was over we had split. What jumped it off was one evening brothers were scheduled for doctrine class and Mfundishi told them they had martial arts training class. Mfundishi did not think the political training was as important as the martial arts. He was always taking the younger brothers, mostly BCD, but some of the younger brothers we had brought with us from Stirling Street, off to the dojo. They pulled personal security as well as security for the building. We always had someone downstairs on the door and sleeping overnight in the building to stop the police and the junkies from ripping us off.

On this particular evening, I raised hell about people being pulled out of doctrine class for Yangumi. There was a confrontation (one that got pretty wild, with Mfundishi ordering a couple of the troops to shoot upstairs and get their heat. Why this was necessary, I don't know. I can't believe he thought I would be scared. The shit was too theatrical). At the end of it I called Karenga and told him what was happening and he got Balozi and Mfundishi on the phone and told them to back off. But Mfundishi pulled all the BCD people out of the CFUN at that moment. They took their gear, which included Mfundishi's record “Music for Zen Meditation” by Fred Katz, and they split. Later Karenga sent a couple of his top people to the East to hang around and make sure that all was well. But I never believed any real violence would jump off.

What it was, I think, was that a rivalry was growing up between the BCD leadership and myself. I was pushing CFUN politically and Mfundishi and Balozi were not ever really deeply involved with actual politics. Except the kind found in
The Quotable Karenga
. Balozi's quips and
Mfundishi's martial arts exhibitions and mystical muscled demeanor were all they thought was needed, plus the charismatic African clothes. We had thought it was a perfect combination, the older electorally oriented political types, the young martial arts cultural nationalists, and the artists, the communicators (who were also deep into cultural nationalism). But the contradictions inside that mix had split it in half.

Karenga, that year, muscled his way into the top leadership of the Black Power Conference. He had always been on the Continuations and Planning Committee. But at the Philadelphia conference, there was a confrontation between the US forces and Max Stanford's RAM and their Black Guards (a takeoff on the Chinese Red Guards). The confrontation seemed to cool out when Stanford showed up with a black eye, never explained to me, and for the rest of the conference at least, a Mexican standoff was what was happening. But the RAM forces and Karenga were always in sharp contradiction after that. (Across from where we had the Arts Workshops that year, at least ten white house painters painted a small woodframe house in the middle of that ghetto all day! Yipes, J. Edgar, was that you?)

The split with the BCD actually left us better off, though at first we felt weakened severely because our “military” arm had been cut away. But the United Brothers aspect of the organization had grown. The younger brothers interested in political work were called Saidis, the ones interested in the military were the Simba Wachanga, in Karenga's terminology. We were better off because now we could pursue our political direction without obstruction, confident in the Kawaida ideology and at the same time continuing to work with the united front concept as much as we could understand it.

Late in 1968 something happened which changed our whole relationship to Karenga and Kawaida. Karenga had come East again for a fundraiser we were giving in Harlem at the Renaissance Ballroom. The place was packed, perhaps a thousand people. We had music and dancers, skits and political speakers. At the height of the program Karenga received a long-distance phone call backstage. I had organized the program and was walking back and forth keeping everything rolling. But I was backstage with him when he got the call. It was something very heavy that went down. Karenga questioned the caller, talking furiously and almost hysterically. There had been a shootout at UCLA, coming out of the sharply intense contradictions between US and the Black Panther Party. Two of the US
brothers had shot and killed two of the Panthers, Bunchy Carter and John Huggins.

I had known Bunchy from L.A. Karenga had organized the Black Congress, an “operational unity” united-front structure that tried to bring the major black organizations in L.A. together to meet once a month to discuss important issues affecting black people. The Spirit House Movers had performed at the Congress building and Bunchy had interviewed me for the Panther newspaper. I walked into his office and it was thick with grass fumes, a no-no for a cultural nationalist, so we felt very superior. Bunchy asked me during the interview did I think the Panthers were “kamikaze niggers,” as Karenga was fond of calling them. There had been bad feeling between Panthers and US in L.A. for months. James Forman had even come out to L.A. once as a peacemaker, sitting between Cleaver and Karenga. When Huey got jailed in '67, Cleaver had taken over as Minister of Information and the Panthers had gotten less black nationalist and more bohemian anarchist ever since.