In the eyes of the house committee on Un-American activities of the House of Representative, the Mau Mau Society of Harlem were an extremist group of Negros involved in riots, looting and burning.
To Charles Morris alias Charles Kenyatta however, “the only avenue oppressed people can turn to is violence in America and all over the world.”
He held that revolution goes through many stages and that in America; the struggle has gone beyond talking and the financial stage to the violent stage. He pointed to the murder of Malcolm X and the jailing of Marcus Garvey as proof that the US government had set its sights on progressive black leaders working for the African interest. Kenyatta was Malcolm X’s body guard.
Martin Luther King’s civil obedience, Kenyatta believed, was a ruse to divert attention away from the revolution.
The Mau Mau Society of Harlem was founded by Charles Kenyatta, Theodore K. Smith, and Herbert Spencer in late 1966 or early 1967.
It had about 20 people in it. It operated as guards at the National Black Conference in Newark, NJ, in 1967, and violently expelled white reporters who were covering the event.
They also provided security for several black power leaders’ speaking engagements in the New York City metropolitan area.
The group took part in a tiny anti-Vietnam black power march on the same day as the Pentagon’s “confrontation” on October 21. (1967).
“Kenyatta was born February 20, 1921, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Ruth Davis and Charles Morris,” according to Blackpast. He studied to be a dental technician as a teenager, but he wanted to be in show business, so he joined the Brown Skinned Models performance at New York City’s Seventh Avenue Nightclub. Morris enlisted in the United States Army in 1942. Army and was stationed in Mississippi at Camp Shelby, but life in the segregated South was challenging. He was convicted of organizing a mutiny by a court martial in September 1944 and sentenced to six years of hard labor. After serving half of his term, he was dismissed from the Army in 1946.
“In Detroit, Michigan, where Malcolm X was an assistant preacher in the Nation of Islam, Morris met Malcolm X as Charles Morris. Morris followed Malcolm X to Mosque No. 7 in New York City, where he was nicknamed Charles 37X and became one of Malcolm X’s closest companions and confidants from 1962 until 1964. “After Malcolm X’s assassination in 1965, Kenyatta formed and led the paramilitary group known as the Mau Mau Society of Harlem, New York. He was the bodyguard for Malcolm X’s family while he was away and the bodyguard at the time of Malcolm’s assassination.” It went on to say: “After Malcolm X’s assassination in 1965, Kenyatta formed and led the paramilitary group known as Mau Mau Society of Harlem in New York.
The Mau Mau society was inspired by Kenya’s Mau Mau ethnic nationality, which campaigned for the country’s independence. Jomo Kenyatta, the Mau Mau leader and first President of Kenya, inspired Charles 37X to take the name Kenyatta.
“The Mau Mau Society of Harlem was primarily concerned with reducing violence and excessive drug usage in Harlem’s streets. The Society described their actions as part of their commitment to protect Harlem’s neighborhood and educate its people’ social and political consciousness. In the late 1960s, he worked with prominent New York City officials, including Mayor John V. Lindsay, to solve slum housing concerns in Harlem and other minority communities in the city.
“Not everyone in Harlem admired Kenyatta’s anti-crime and anti-drug efforts. Kenyatta’s and the Mau Mau Society’s efforts irritated narcotics dealers. As a result, he was the target of a number of assassination attempts. On June 7, 1969, he was admitted to Fordham Hospital after a failed attempt.
Kenyatta returned to Christianity after Malcolm’s death and later became a minister at the White Rock Baptist Church in Harlem. Kenyatta married South Korean immigrant Sung Bok Lee in 2002, at the age of 82, in a contentious move that his family despised.
“Charles Sumner Kenyatta died of an illness on May 10, 2005, at the age of 85. His children relocated him away from his wife to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, due to his worsening health. Evelyn, Ester, Joyce, and Hellen Morris, his four daughters, survive him.”