Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University History Dissertations Department of History 5-10-2017 Complements to Kazi Leaders: Female Activists in Kawaida- Influenced Cultural-Nationalist Organizations, 1965-1987 Kenja McCray Atlanta Metropolitan College Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_diss Recommended Citation McCray, Kenja, "Complements to Kazi Leaders: Female Activists in Kawaida-Influenced Cultural- Nationalist Organizations, 1965-1987." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2017. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_diss/57 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of History at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. COMPLEMENTS TO KAZI LEADERS: FEMALE ACTIVISTS IN KAWAIDA-INFLUENCED CULTURAL-NATIONALIST ORGANIZATIONS, 1965-1987 KENJA MCCRAY Under the Direction of John McMillian, PhD ABSTRACT This dissertation explores the memories and motivations of women who helped mold Pan-African cultural nationalism through challenging, refining, and reshaping organizations influenced by Kawaida, the black liberation philosophy that gave rise to Kwanzaa. This study focuses on female advocates in the Us Organization, Committee for a Unified Newark and the Congress of African People, the East, and Ahidiana. Emphasizing the years 1965 through the mid-to-late 1980s, the work delves into the women’s developing sense of racial and gender consciousness against the backdrop of the Black Power Movement. The study contextualizes recollections of women within the groups’ growth and development, ultimately tracing the organizations’ weakening, demise, and influence on subsequent generations. It examines female advocates within the larger milieu of the Civil Rights Movement’s retrenchment and the rise of Black Power. The dissertation also considers the impact of resurgent African-American nationalism, global independence movements, concomitant Black Campus, Black Arts, and Black Studies Movements, and the groups’ struggles amidst state repression and rising conservatism. Employing oral history, womanist approaches, and primary documents, this work seeks to increase what is known about female Pan-African cultural nationalists. Scholarly literature and archival sources reflect a dearth of cultural-nationalist women’s voices in the historical record. Several organizational histories have included the women’s contributions, but do not substantially engage their backgrounds, motives, and reasoning. Although women were initially restricted to “complementary” roles as helpmates, they were important in shaping and sustaining Pan-African cultural nationalist organizations by serving as key actors in food cooperatives, educational programs, mass communications pursuits, community enterprises, and political organizing. As female advocates grappled with sexism in Kawaida-influenced groups, they also developed literature, programs, and organizations that broadened the cultural-nationalist vision for ending oppression. Women particularly helped reformulate and modernize Pan-African cultural nationalism over time and space by resisting and redefining restrictive gender roles. As such, they left a legacy of “kazi leadership” focused on collectivity, a commitment to performing the sustained work of bringing about black freedom, and centering African and African- descended people’s ideas and experiences. INDEX WORDS: African-American history and culture, Women activists, Black Power, Black nationalism, Pan-Africanism, Servant leadership COMPLEMENTS TO KAZI LEADERS: FEMALE ACTIVISTS IN KAWAIDA-INFLUENCED CULTURAL-NATIONALIST ORGANIZATIONS, 1965-1987 by KENJA MCCRAY A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2017 Copyright by Kenja Royce McCray 2017 COMPLEMENTS TO KAZI LEADERS: FEMALE ACTIVISTS IN KAWAIDA-INFLUENCED CULTURAL-NATIONALIST ORGANIZATIONS, 1965-1987 by KENJA MCCRAY Committee Chair: John McMillian Committee: Jacqueline Rouse Mary Rolinson Akinyele Umoja Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University May 2017 DEDICATION I dedicate this dissertation to my supportive and loving family. This work is for my husband, Michael A. Foster, who lovingly endured more than any spouse should have to. It is for my daughters Ayodele and Sikudhani Foster-McCray, who sacrificed many days at the museum and park so I could earn this degree. It is for my mother and father, Patricia and Roy, whose high standards laid the foundation for this pursuit. This dissertation is for my grandmother Leola, who was denied any such opportunity due to her race, class, and gender. I offer many thanks to my aunts and uncles as well as my supportive sisters, step-family, in-laws, and cousins. I you owe a debt of gratitude, as you looked after my children while I studied and wrote, cheering for me whenever I needed inspiration. I love and cherish you all. This dissertation is also for the many people who opened their homes, gave their stories, and shared their souls. I submit this document in memory of Queen Nzinga Ratibisha Heru (1947-2011) and all the ancestors who have paved the way for me to be. I finally dedicate this work “to the masses of Blackwomen, my sistuhs, who will also awaken and grow, to defend and develop ourselves, so that we may contribute and create, advancing our race to places and spaces, previously thought unattainable!”1 1 Tayari kwa Salaam, Working Together We Can Make a Change: Towards Sisterhoods of Struggle (New Orleans: Nkombo, c. 1981), dedication. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I greatly appreciate my advisors John C. McMillian, Jacqueline Rouse, Akinyele Umoja, and Mary G. Rolinson in the Georgia State University (GSU) departments of history and African American Studies. I could never thank you enough for your expertise and patience as I juggled many responsibilities. I would additionally like to thank GSU faculty and staff members Joe Perry, Paula Sorrell, Carolyn Withers, and Robin Jackson for your help and kind words. To the Atlanta Metropolitan State College (AMSC) administrators and faculty (past and present), thanks for your support as I attempted to matriculate while maintaining a year-round, full-time teaching, advisement, and service schedule. Many thanks go to my colleagues, especially Curtis Todd, Vance Gray, and Harry Asana Akoh who gave the most concrete advice a colleague could ever ask for. Thanks to my sister-friends, mentors, consultants, and confidantes Antoinette Nozibele Waithe, Ifetayo Ojelade, Yeye Greer Stanford-Randle, Christy Garrison-Harrison, Arika Easely- Houser, and Natanya Duncan. I also appreciate all the formal and informal writing group members I encountered, from Asantewa Sunni-Ali and Keisha Blain to Corliss Heath and Nafeesa Muhammad. I am especially grateful to the Sister Scholars virtual community, which includes AnneMarie Mingo and Cynthia Stewart. I appreciate all the individuals who provided me research and editing assistance, particularly Tony Jamal Lee, Keenya Bradley, and Deborah Striplin. I have much gratitude for the librarians and archivists who assisted me at Amistad Research Center at Tulane, AMSC, Auburn Avenue, GSU Pullen, and Emory Libraries as well as the University of California Los Angeles Center for African American Studies, Hamline University Archives, and Swenson Swedish Immigration Research Center. Thank you so much v Kwasi Konadu, Michael Simanga, and Komozi Woodard for graciously sharing your time, archival materials, connections, and insight. AMSC Vice President Mark Cunningham and the Association of GSU Historians, thank you for research travel funds. To the Association of Black Women’s Historians, I greatly appreciate your monetary support and public recognition of my work. I gratefully acknowledge that it took a whole village to make this dissertation a reality. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................V LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................... XI LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...................................................................................... XII 1 INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Terminology ........................................................................................................... 3 1.2 Invisible and Hypervisible Women ...................................................................... 10 1.3 Historiography and Context ................................................................................ 16 1.4 Overview of Chapters ........................................................................................... 27 2 “NOBODY KNOWS OUR NAMES”: PAN-AFRICAN CULTURAL- NATIONALIST WOMEN’S MOTIVATIONS FOR JOINING THE BLACK FREEDOM STRUGGLE ......................................................................................... 32 2.1 Race Women ......................................................................................................... 32 2.2 Vindicationists .....................................................................................................