Once a devoted follower, Deborah Jones recalls a weekend of alleged terror, torture, and trauma
“It was sobering and saddening to read what Deborah Jones experienced, reminding us that placing any human leader on a pedestal is a path toward chaos and corruption. Thank the ancestors, her spirit was as strong as it was.”
—Jake-Ann Jones, co-author, “Sometimes Farm Girls Become Revolutionaries: Notes on Black Power, Politics, Depression, and the FBI.”
Given the oppression and unequal treatment in society, it was perhaps inevitable that the Black Power Movement emerged in mid-century America. Unlike their more socially acceptable contemporaries in the nonviolent Civil Rights community with whom they shared mutual goals, these militant factions were open to utilize violence as a tool to achieve their aims.
Locally in Los Angeles, the most visible manifestation of dissent were the Black Panthers, derived from the parent organization started in the Bay Area city of Oakland. The L.A. branch was largely populated with gang members under the leadership of Bunchy Carter, the so-called “Mayor of the Ghetto” who helmed the Renegade Slausons.
Opposing them were an outsider Nationalist group largely unknown outside of Los Angeles called the US Organization, or simply “US,” founded by Ron Everett, who took up the honorarium Maulana Karenga, a well educated Afrocentric scholar, Maulana is an African or Asian title meaning “Master” or “teacher.” While the Panther doctrine was steeped in Marxist theories of socialism, US emphasized the embrace of their lost African tradition of culture to enhance self esteem and unity within the community. These features attracted the attention of scores of teen-aged Deborah Jones, who had been exposed to Karenga’s older brother, a teacher at Edison Junior High School on Los Angeles’ east side.
This disconnect eventually metastasized to a firearms shootout on the UCLA campus in which Carter and fellow Black Panther John Huggins were killed on January 17, 1969.
Jones has published a historical narrative of her experiences during these tumultuous times, titled “What We Stood For: The Story of a Revolutionary Black Woman,” recently through Diasporic Africa Press.
Like many of her contemporaries in urban Los Angeles, she was interested in and committed to “…the liberation of my people, the love of my people” and was open to the overtures of militancy.
Liberation, patriarchy, and sexism
“A woman asserting herself was a pariah. If a Black woman assumed a role of leadership, she was sad to be eroding Black manhood, to be hindering the progress of the Black race.”
—former Black Panther Party
Chairwoman Elaine Brown
Naturally bright, Deborah Jones made an impression on Karenga, who bestowed upon her the title “Tetemeko,” meaning “one who makes the earth move.”
She quickly took to the amenities included with being an US member by joining their Taifa dance troupe. On top of being Afrocentric the athletic youngster enjoyed learning African dance as a means of connecting with her heritage.
“Every dance told an African story: how the ancestors lived, or a love story, or a story on how we were taken. The dances always told a story,” she recalled in her memoir.
Her participation in Taifa afforded her the chance to travel throughout the state, as well as east to colleges and universities along the East Coast. It also allowed her to remain oblivious to the dysfunction that was part and parcel of the US environment.
Returning to the fold, Karenga put her in charge of the Matamba, the female component of US. She was given the title of “Nzinga,” after the 14th century queen of the Matamba who occupied what is now Angola.
She took to this promotion with a vengeance, endeavoring to, in the parlance of the millennium, empower the women under her by teaching weaponry and martial arts. Curiously, this unleashed a fissure between her and her former advocate, in that Karenga believed that a woman’s place, queen or not, was subservient to male dominant, a notion shared by their rivals in the Black Panthers, as noted by Panther chairwoman Brown.
“Tetemeko’s” natural assertiveness, a trait embedded well before she was made “Nzinga,” natural clashed with the patriarchy espoused by the US hierarchy.
Mother’s Day Weekend, 1970 and a ghetto torture chamber
Driven to paranoia by competition with the Panthers, and possibly instigated by agent provocateurs enlisted by law enforcement, Karenga’s imagination ran amok, abetted by the possible abuse of amphetamines. He began seeing threats within US, to the point where he abducted Deborah Jones and one of his wives, Gail Davis aka “Idili,” accusing them of trying to poison him, and tortured them over a hellish three day weekend in a garage off of Central and Century.
During this period they were reportedly stripped naked and endured abuse in the form of beatings, whippings with extension cords, and a crude form of what is now known as waterboarding, before being released.
In the aftermath, the victims pushed charges against Karenga, using photographic evidence of their ordeal for his conviction in September 1971. He eventually did four years out of a 10-year sentence for assault and false imprisonment.
The passage of time and lessons learned
“I had an experience and it helped me to become...I stopped using the word ‘best.’ I started using the word ‘better,’ okay?”
—from “What We Stood For: The Story of a Revolutionary Black Woman” by Deborah Jones, 2024.
In an interview with the leftist Black Agenda Report, co-author Thandisizwe Chimurenga offered a summation of some of the lessons to be taken from this book. Among her observations are that in any collection of people when there are “…internal contradictions and there are character flaws that go unaddressed, when there is no accountability, it allows our true enemies to exacerbate our internal problems, our internal shortcomings.”
This may be a reference to the influence of COINTELPRO on radical groups from this era, and the need to acknowledge and study what she calls “...the rot within, the rot that was already there.”
Ron Karanga (https://maulanakarenga.org/) did not respond to efforts for his side of those fateful events decades ago.
He has steadfastly maintained that he was nothing more than a political prisoner, insisting he was railroaded on what he called “trumped up charges.”
He rebounded to become chair of the Africana studies at Long Beach State University (https://cla.csulb.edu/departments/africanastudies/faculty-and-staff/maulana-karenga/) and a pioneer in the field of Pan African studies. US still maintains offices at 3018 W 48th Street, and a website at http://www.us-organization.org/. Karenga’s most famous legacy, Kwanzaa is observed in the United States and abroad, and has been recognized by several U.S. Presidents, including Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump.
“What We Stood For: The Story of a Revolutionary Black Woman,” published by Diasporic Africa Press, is available at Amazon.com, the publisher website at https://dafricapress.com, and locally at Eso Won Books at 4329 Degnan Blvd. in Leimert Park.
