"Right on"

[Wilson Gray]

On Nov 11, 2004, at 4:52 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "Right on"
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> At 6:34 PM -0800 11/10/04, Towse wrote:
>> On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 17:35:46 -0500, Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at rcn.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>  Maulana Ron Karenga, the Huey Newton of US, was, the last I
>>>  heard, a professor of sociology at the State University of
>>> California,
>>>  Long Beach. Huey Newton, of course, is dead.
>>
>> Karenga is more widely known as the guy who invented Kwanzaa.
>> <http://www.officialkwanzaawebsite.org/karengabio.html>
>>
>
> School pride* forces me to add that when Ron Karenga (as he was then
> known) invented Kwanzaa (which, given Swahili penultimate stress
> principles, "should" be stressed on the second of the three /a/s), it
> was during his days (and mine) at UCLA around 1966-68.
>
> (*School pride hasn't yet forced me to get around to making alumni
> contributions, so they'll have to settle for what they can get.)
>
> larry
>

Were you there for the big campus shoot-out between the Panthers and US
that ended the battle for hegemony over the LA area? I was taking an
evening course in Zen Buddhism that day. Needless to say, I learned
more about the battle from the Times than I did from having been there.
Better safe than sorry.

And you're right. He was just plain "Ron Karenga" for years. If I had
to guess, I'd say that he didn't give himself the title of "maulana"
till he got hired at Long Beach.

-Wilson