Back to the Future: Honoring the Impact of B. Kwaku Duren on CSU

Summary 

 

This CSU blog article is dedicated to one of our founders, B. Kwaku Duren and is part of our ongoing project, Sankofa, which looks to our past to better understand and illuminate our present, and help create a pathway for our future. It starts with a Juneteenth event Kwaku was part of in a small town in California and looks at the history of the day, and the town, and the connected events of “red summer”. The author then gives a biographical sketch of Kwaku’s life, ending with a focus on his contribution to and critique of Community Economic Development and the impact of his work and ideas on the creation of the VMP Food Hub and the Paul Robeson Community Wellness Center locally, and Equitable Food Oriented Development, nationally. A knowledge and understanding of this multi layered history and the lessons it has taught us have been a critical force in shaping the work CSU has been engaged in, the form it has taken, and how we have carried it out. An original article written by Kwaku for The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service in 1999 is shared in its entirety alongside this piece, and is highly recommended. 

 

“There are no new ideas, there are only new ways of making them felt”

Audre Lorde

 

Introduction 

 

In the summer of 2001 Community Services Unlimited Inc. (CSU) and the New Panther Vanguard Movement (NPVM) were part of organizing an event in Allensworth, California. It was held to celebrate Juneteenth, by remembering and honoring the important history of this small town. Part of organizing the vehicles that took people from Los Angeles, and also a speaker at the event rally, was the founder of both CSU and the NPVM, B. Kwaku Duren. Juneteenth is now a federal holiday, and we open this article by reflecting on the history and origins of this day and some of the historical context that must not be forgotten.

 

Juneteenth

 

Juneteenth originates in Galveston, Texas and is celebrated as the anniversary of June 19th 1865, the date that General Order No. 3 by the Union Army was announced by General Gordon Granger, proclaiming the end of enslavement in Texas, the last state of the Confederacy where institutional chattel slavery was still legal. Juneteenth events date back to 1866 and at first centered around church communities in Texas (Black people were prevented access to public facilities), quickly spreading across the South and becoming a celebration of African American culture featuring food and music. During the Great Migration of the early 20th Century the large numbers of southern Blacks moving northwards took their traditions with them and over time the day was celebrated beyond the south, leading some states to adopt it as an official holiday. Now, also known as Jubilee Day, Emancipation Day, Freedom Day and Black Independence Day, Juneteenth is seen by many to be as important as Independence Day and its popularity has grown. On June 17th 2021 President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act making Juneteenth a federal holiday. 

 

Any opportunity for commemoration/recognition of and focus on the history and culture of African Americans is a positive step, especially in a racist society where the deeply rooted systems that preference white history and culture have yet to be dismantled, whatever the good intentions of individuals might be. However, the proclamation of a holiday does nothing to change the concrete conditions of day-to-day poverty, oppression and assault that still face Black communities across the US. In fact, too often throughout history such measures have been offered in an attempt to placate radical movements and disconnect an event or a person from the connective tissue of collective and broad history that gives them deeper meaning beyond their own limits. At CSU we are clear that if we are serious about building equity, we must remain vigilant and keep our eyes firmly on the details of what real changes are being proposed and initiated beyond the surface gloss. It is no accident that before becoming a federal holiday, Juneteenth had become increasingly popular, and commercialized. Lisa Osborne Ross writes about this in her opinion piece for CNN Business headlined, “Black consumers like me want change – not Juneteenth branded products.”

 

As a non-profit founded by Black Panthers, with a successful community-based business, we are only too aware of the precarious spaces between the genuine and respectful remembrance and celebration of important historical Black (or any POC) events, and the commercialization of these to serve the ever-greedy corporations of Capitalism. Black business is not a new idea and the creation of vibrant and successful Black businesses is not a new occurrence. As we share below, history clearly shows that if and when mainstream white society is threatened by economic activities that are connected to a social justice agenda, it has no qualms in brutally putting a stop to them, littering their path with impediments, and/or transforming them into something far removed from their roots in order to co-opt them into a purely Capitalist venture or feel-good celebration, with no political content. 

 

Red Summer

 

After the abolition of slavery, none of the promises made to former slaves were honored, there were no 40 acres and no mule. There were no programs or social reforms to assist a people from whom everything had been stolen to help them gain some foothold in life. In fact, as stated by W.E.B. DuBois in The Souls of Black Folk “The Negro was freed and turned loose as a penniless, landless, naked, ignorant, laborer. Ninety-nine percent were field hands and servants”. And while slavery was officially ended, the racist beliefs that were developed to justify it were very much alive and a constant presence to be contended with. The rise of the Ku Klux Klan, the violent suppression of radical reconstruction and enforcement of the Black Codes and Jim Crow all happened within just a decade of the end of slavery. And yet, despite all of this, in collective efforts of almost unbelievable proportions, African Americans still managed to build communities, to come together to create functioning townships with vibrant commerce and successful businesses. 

 

John Singleton’s 1997 movie Rosewood depicts the intentional and violent destruction in 1923 of one of these Black communities. Rosewood in Florida was a small but thriving town when it was attacked by a mob of several hundred white people, who burnt almost every single building to the ground and roamed the countryside hunting for Black people to kill. The official death toll was 8 (6 Blacks, 2 whites), but eye witness accounts recall a mass grave that was filled with at least 26 Black bodies. No one was arrested, charged, or imprisoned. While the events were widely reported at the time around the US, there was no official investigation or record. The town was abandoned, no one was compensated for the loss of their land, home or the murder of their loved ones.

 

This was just one of many such incidents, and sadly not the worst. As described in this National Geographic article, from 1917 to 1923, “at least 97 lynchings were recorded, thousands of Black people were killed, and thousands of Black-owned homes and businesses were burned to the ground. Fire and fury fueled massacres in at least 26 cities, including Washington, D.C.; Chicago, Illinois; Omaha, Nebraska; Elaine, Arkansas; Charleston, South Carolina; Columbia, Tennessee; Houston, Texas; and Tulsa, Oklahoma.” The article quotes historian and author C.R. Gibbs sharing his thoughts about what fueled such events, “not just blind race hatred, but resentment of social gains the Black community made just after World War I. When we embraced the capitalist aesthetic, folks lynched us. When we showed we were prosperous, people burned down stores…” So much violence was carried out during these years by whites against Blacks, the era became known as red summer. 

 

Allensworth

 

While many vibrant Black communities were openly and viciously attacked there were others where the destruction was more covert. One of these in California was a town called Allensworth, founded in 1908 exclusively by African Americans, led by Colonel Allen Allensworth. When he retired in 1906 Allensworth was the highest-ranking Black officer in the US army, he had been born into slavery in 1842 in Louisville, Kentucky and escaped behind the Union line during the Civil War. In 1877 he married Josephine Leavall and when he retired from the army they travelled widely around the US with their children, lecturing on the need for self-help programs that would assist their people to become more self-sufficient. One of Allensworth’s intentional goals was to find a site, away from the Jim Crow south, where African Americans could work together to build a new life. 

 

Joined by others he had met along the way, including Harry Mitchell, a Los Angeles Realtor, Dr. William H. Peck, an AME minister in Los Angeles and J.W. Palmer, a Nevada miner, Allensworth chose a location in south west Tulare County which had plenty of water, virgin soil and a depot connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco on the Santa Fe Railroad. Together they filed the paperwork on August 3rd 1908 to form the town of Solito, changing the name later to honor Allensworth. They created a democratic Progressive Association wherein townspeople held meetings and elected officers. In 1912 the town became a voting precinct and had its own 33 square mile school district. Town citizens donated funds and raised $5,000, a huge amount at the time and the equivalent of more than $150,000 today, to build a one room school, showing the importance African Americans attached to education. The school hosted elementary, middle and high school students and was governed by an elected board that included Josephine Allensworth, who was also the school’s first teacher. 

 

The school building served as a town center and meeting place for the Progressive Association, the Women’s Improvement League, a debating society and a theatre club. In 1914, the State of California sanctioned Allensworth as a judicial district. A branch of the Tulare County Library and a post office were established in the town, with a reading room built in a separate library building in 1913. A drug store, livery, stable, bakery, barber shop and a hotel were amongst the town’s established businesses, but agriculture dominated the economy. In 1914 the town decided to create a vocational school based on the ideas of Booker T. Washington. While support for state funding appropriation was received for this from Tulare and Fresno County representatives in the California State Senate, and Assembly, the entire state legislature voted against the proposal. The town suffered another serious set-back when Colonel Allensworth was hit by a motorcycle while in Los Angeles in 1914, causing his death. Still, the town continued to thrive with new residents arriving into the 1920’s. 

 

But no matter how resilient or adaptable, life cannot survive without water. The original purchase of the land had been handled by the Pacific Farming Company and part of its role was to deliver sufficient irrigation water. It never did this and the town’s leaders were tied up in long and expensive legal battles using money they could ill afford to fight a company with comparatively limitless resources. In 1925 the insufficient water supplies began to plague the town. The water being received could not sustain the agriculture and ranching that was a major part of commerce for the community. Allensworth’s residents and farmers who had moved to land near the town began to leave the area and look for other ways to support their families. According to the US Census, by 1930 the population dropped to below 300 people. Those who remained tried to keep the town alive by drilling new water wells, experimenting with new farming methods and creating new businesses. Allensworth hung on, barely, and then in 1966 the state discovered arsenic at high levels in the drinking water. Aside from 34 families, all the residents left, leaving their incredible achievement to become a ghost town. Again, no one was compensated for loss of land, property or income.

 

It is hard to imagine that other cases like Allensworth don’t exist. If those who blatantly committed acts of terrorism, including murder, to shut down thriving Black communities never had to face a single accusation, much less atone for their actions in anyway, why would others refrain from using less violent mechanisms? Given the widespread and deeply held racism that permeated every area of life in the US at the time, it is no surprise that concerns like the Pacific Farming Company saw no danger in defaulting on their contract to make a few easy bucks and literally leave this burgeoning Black town high and dry in the process. The son and daughter of this article’s author both attended schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the latter from elementary onwards, and at no point was there any mention of Allensworth in any of their lessons or subjects throughout their entire schooling. At CSU, we have studied California state curriculum when designing content for our school based Growing Healthy program, and likewise have seen no mention of this important California history.

 

Kwaku Duren

 

By 2001 Juneteenth had been gaining popularity amongst African Americans as an event to celebrate and the NPVM and CSU leadership were asked by members/supporters to do something to mark the day. At the time B. Kwaku Duren was Chairman of the NPVM and Executive Director of CSU. He felt strongly that remembering Allensworth and the bigger history it was connected to was the only way to be part of a Juneteenth event that had some meaning and was not simply another get together. Kwaku explained at the time that his commitment to an active, participatory rally in Allensworth was about his belief that “we shouldn’t just celebrate Juneteenth (or any such event) without being engaged in it as an opportunity to educate and/or activate people”. This tendency to look beyond the surface and not be content with simply organizing ‘feel good’ activities, but to want to connect the celebration of African American culture with concrete and positive impacts in the ongoing struggle for social justice has left a legacy at CSU that we are proud of. Kwaku’s writings, thought and life example have impacted our current work positively in so many ways that an article of this size can only gesture towards.

Born on April 14th, 1943 in Beckley, West Virginia, Kwaku’s parents named him Robert Donaldson Duren and Bobby became the name he was called by his family and friends. He later legally changed his name, replacing the Christian/western names with the West African/Ashanti, Kwaku, meaning man child born on a Wednesday, and keeping the B, to respect his given/popular family name. While he was still in his infancy, Kwaku’s parents moved to Cleveland, Ohio. When his father, William Preston, lost two and a half fingers of his right hand while working for Midland Steel, he was given a small settlement and dismissed. His mother Willie-Wade, a housewife, was forced to work cleaning houses for white folks. By 1960 his parents had re-located to Long Beach, California and that year his father was arrested by the FBI during a house raid for a series of armed robberies he was part of in Cleveland, after his work place injury prevented him earning money. He was extradited to and served many years in Chillicothe Prison in Ohio, where by legally researching and appealing his case, he won his release on a technicality. He re-joined his family, and re-married Willie-Wade, who had divorced him when he went to prison.

 

The events described above took place in what were formative years for Kwaku and for some time he mirrored what he had seen around him. When he was 17 Kwaku was arrested for breaking and entering and placed on probation after serving six months in an LA County jail. He then took to working in a pool hall in Long Beach where he sold drugs and over several years committed a series of convenience store hold ups along with a partner. In spring 1966 he held up a cab driver and was charged, convicted and sentenced to 5 years to life in prison. 

 

During the 4 and ½ years he spent in Soledad and Chino, an intervention by a Black counsellor changed Kwaku’s life path. The counsellor introduced him to the writings of W.E.B Du Bois, which had a profound impact on him, especially The World and Africa. He began a voracious study of African American history reading the entire works of J.A. Rogers, and The Autobiography of Malcolm X, amongst others. He focused on studying slavery and its ongoing impacts and became interested in broader political and world history, reading Engels, Marx, Fromm and Lenin, ordering books through the California State and UNESCO Libraries. During this time in prison Kwaku enrolled in San Francisco State University completing classes in economics, astronomy, sociology and psychology. At the age of 27, in 1970, he was paroled. 

 

From this time on Kwaku chose to emulate the lives of those he had read about, and he became a political activist involved in a number of different campaigns and community groups. In 1973 he and his sister Betty Scott, and then partner Mary Blackburn, founded the Intercommunal Youth Institute (IYI) in Long Beach. It was modeled after the highly successful Black Panther Party Community School in Oakland, with “The World Is a Classroom”, a quote from Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, as its motto. The IYI received State Board of Education certification and federal funds. As part of his work with the school Kwaku took IYI students on a Venceremos Brigade visit to Cuba in summer 1975. Later that year, in September, his sister Betty was shot and killed by the California Highway patrol while on her way to a jazz festival. Her partner, George Smith, who was traveling with her, was charged with the attempted murder of a police officer. Kwaku and others formed the Scott-Smith Defense Committee and sued the CHP for wrongful death. The law suit was unsuccessful and with Betty gone, the IYI dissolved. 

 

Deeply impacted by this experience, in early 1976 Kwaku co-founded the Coalition Against Police Abuse (CAPA) and became its co-chair. CAPA created a broad-based alliance between the Black and Mexican Communities in Los Angeles with its purpose to prevent, expose, resist and seek legal redress for police abuse and misconduct. That summer Kwaku enrolled in the Peoples’ College of Law. Around the same time, he and other Black activists went to Oakland to meet with Elaine Brown, Chairwoman of the Black Panther Party (BPP), to discuss re-forming the LA Chapter. In October Kwaku joined the BPP and in January 1977 the office of the newly re-formed Southern California Chapter (SCC) of the BPP was opened on Central Avenue, while police helicopters circled above the area. That same year Kwaku co-founded Community Services Unlimited Inc. (CSU), of which he became Executive Director, through which to raise funds and house community programs. 

 

Over the next decade or so Kwaku was involved in organizing through the SCC-BPP and CAPA as well as pursuing his legal studies at the People’s College of Law (PCL). These were constantly interrupted by his political activism. For example, he became a lead plaintiff in CAPA et. al. versus Daryl Gates, an ACLU domestic spying lawsuit. An African American LAPD officer, David Bryant, had illegally infiltrated the SCC of the BPP and the suit, which resulted in the disbanding of the Public Disorder and Intelligence Division of the Los Angeles Police Department was settled for $1.3 million in 1983. 

 

The BPP Oakland leadership, which by now had passed back into the hands of Huey P. Newton who had returned from exile, disbanded the SCC in 1982. However, CSU was kept intact as an organizing vehicle to serve the community, and Kwaku and his colleagues continued organizing community programs well into the late 90’s. As he pursued his legal studies, Kwaku took a deep interest in Community Economic Development (CED) as a potential route to re-building neglected Black and Brown communities. He also made the CSU apparatus available as a fiscal agent to multiple local grass-roots organizing efforts, assisting some to gain their own non-profit status. In 1989, Kwaku graduated from PCL, he took the bar for the first time that October and passed. In that same year he co-founded the California Community Economic Development Association (CCEDA), to re-vitalize California’s neighborhoods via resident-driven community development corporations and agencies. 

 

The creation of CCEDA was not an anomaly, but was in fact part of a country-wide movement, with similar organizations created in other states. In an article from summer 1999 headlined  “Community Economic Development – Its Origins and Philosophy” Kwaku traces the development of the CED movement and discusses its successes and failures. Learning from this history has been critical as CSU has worked in subsequent years to build Equitable Food Oriented Development (EFOD) in South Central LA and leveraged this experience to co-create and build EFOD nationally. 

 

Kwaku opens by discussing the conceptual and philosophical roots of CED which interestingly he pin-points to the ideas of Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey and the era of development of separate Black townships and communities that this article has discussed above. As Kwaku puts it these ideas emerged in a “hostile environment” and as we have seen, the gains of this work were intentionally destroyed. He then looks at the emergence of Community Development Corporations (CDC’s) in the 1950’s as an attempt to foster private investment, for inner city development. These early Grey Areas Programs as they were called, led by the mid 1960’s to a number of development initiatives being created by community organizations around the country, especially in Black neighborhoods. 

 

The demands for justice of the Civil Rights Movement and the desire of America’s national leaders to exhibit some kind of economic response led to the passing of the Economic Opportunities Act of 1964 and the creation of the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) which developed a Special Impact Program, and later began in a small way to support community development corporations. Both the OEO staff and the private financiers of these efforts, like the Ford Foundation, made it clear that they saw CDC’s as economic investment vehicles and not political organizations. This preference by those providing funds, combined with the very limited funds made available, led to emerging CDC’s narrowing their focus to very mainstream economic development projects, stripped of any political content or creativity. With the coming to office of President Nixon, a focus was placed on individual entrepreneurs over collective community efforts, with no real increase in available financial investment and no technical support. And yet, a study by the Urban Institute for the US Department of HUD in 1983 showed that CDC’s based in communities had against all these odds, a surprising success rate throughout the previous two decades, renovating existing and building new housing, creating jobs and attracting investment in small businesses. It is truly a testament to the commitment and tenacity of folks who were doing this work that they were able to achieve even these humble successes. 

 

In 1992 the LA rebellion highlighted once again how the unrest and dissatisfaction created by long term disinvestment, lack of opportunities and police misconduct within certain communities, can explode and impact an entire city. In addition to police corruption, the event drew attention to the lack of basic resources like parks and markets in places like South Central LA, amenities taken for granted in other wealthier neighborhoods. This created a new push in demands to develop long neglected communities and CDC’s once again became the focal point. Kwaku points out the many potential advantages at that time of CDC’s as vehicles for community development. However, once again the separation of economic development from community engagement and any kind of political content led to the creation of buildings and businesses that ultimately did not build local economies, create local jobs, or serve the long-term interests of local residents. As Kwaku puts it in his article, “In retrospect it appears that many CDC’s were too quick to narrow their focus simply to investing, they sought only to be evaluated by their success in creating jobs and brick and mortar projects. Several factors combined to inhibit creativity and reduce the tendency of CDC’s to seek fundamental changes in mainstream economic institutions.” 

 

Critical Lessons for CSU, Now and into the Future

 

This essential lesson has informed the work CSU has engaged in for the last 25 or so years. From the very humble beginnings of building community farms and starting one weekly produce stand, to developing a fully-fledged brick and mortar food hub, we have been clear that we cannot separate political analysis and content from our programs and economic development work. Our projects and ventures have critical education and community engagement as central concerns. We see what we do in building and running the Paul Robeson Center and the Village Market Place as creating a model for change, not simply as an end in itself, and we use every opportunity this presents for information sharing and dialogue. At different stages of our food justice work we have firmly turned down advice that we were told would make us an easier investment, for example, to make our business more profitable by dropping the focus on organic and local foods, to hire experienced staff from outside our community, to not openly support the struggle of the Palestinian people, to not talk about our Panther roots, and to only have as board members individuals who can contribute large sums of money. Sometimes the advice came from industry “experts”, at other times it came from well-meaning colleagues. 

 

With the many lessons from our local work very much in mind CSU has been part of creating the national strategy Equitable Food Oriented Development (EFOD). One of our major principles as expressed in the EFOD Criteria is precisely to guard against the separation of economic development from community and current political and historical context. The development of EFOD and the form it has taken is particularly important at this time. The Black Lives Matter Movement and the anger of all righteous human beings at the ongoing violence against Black bodies in America has created another critical historical moment. There is a renewed commitment to invest in communities that most need it and again the focal point for the public and often the private investment is CED. This is currently taking many forms. Much of the public investment will be directed through Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI’s), and a number of new ones are being created with the help of Technical Assistance programs. 

 

We are currently living in a time of much possibility and as we engage in the opportunities around us to create positive change, we keep in mind these words from Kwaku, which are just as relevant now, as they were in 1999: “the practical effect of doing development projects without a political component is to limit the potential of Community Development Corporations…to cause the kind of institutional changes needed to carry out community economic development on a significant scale. Ultimately the idea of CED cannot be realized absent a significant infusion of capital into poor communities. Thus, ideally CED coalitions must formulate political strategies that are integrated with investment-oriented projects.”  We remember those upon whose shoulders we stand, whether they are individuals we know, like Kwaku, or the countless unnamed warriors like those who built thriving Black communities with sheer force of will and against all odds. Knowing and celebrating their history alone is not enough, we strive to honor them by continuing their work to create equity and justice and build thriving communities where all individuals have everything they need to develop to their fullest capacity. Drawing from the past helps us remain grounded in a time when the pressures of social media, its sound bites and the allure of vast numbers of followers can push us in directions that do not serve the advancement of equity and justice. Knowing our history gives us perspective and builds humility in the knowledge that nothing we do is new. Understanding this history and how it has shaped the conditions of current reality is a powerful tool to help us frame a forward direction as we continue the good fight. Power to the People! 

 

By Neelam Sharma, Creative Change Maven

Neelam Sharma is an active, angry, joyful, loving, sometimes confused and always committed citizen of earth. Her work is informed by many years of activism in the United Kingdom and her 25-year experience of building Community Services Unlimited (CSU), a grass roots community organization in South Central Los Angeles where she served in many roles from volunteer to Executive Director. During this time, she co-founded Equitable Food Oriented Development, a national strategy to bring community driven health and wealth building infrastructure to oppressed and neglected communities and later, the South Central Equitable Development Fund, to build upon the work of CSU locally. Currently, Neelam is growing an independent consulting practice, volunteers helping to manage and maintain ancient woodlands, writes, reads, and grows food and flowers. She can be contacted at Neelooks@gmail.com

 

Banner Photo: Kwaku and members of the New Panther Vanguard Movement, an organization he co-founded in response to the Los Angeles rebellion in 1992. From left to right: BB Black, Sharrief Abdullah, Kwaku Duren, Kwame Duren, Evelyn Brown, Dreamer Black

Photo Credits: Unless otherwise stated photos are by the author and/or from her archives.