***135pm EDT update…Al Sharpton calls President Bush “evil…James Crow Jr., Esquire…broken levees are weapons of mass destruction…Our people are dying in Iraq and being drowned in New Orleans…We’ll be in Baton Rouge on the 29th…this is the beginning of the regeneration of the movement for our people…”***

If you tune into C-SPAN right now, you will hear a lot of angry bloviating and blaming. The 10th anniversary of the Million M[o]an March is here and Farrakhan’s fulminators have seized the day in D.C. I’ve just finished watching “Maulana” Ron Karenga, who fabricated the Kwanzaa holiday,” and implored the attendees of the Millions More March to remember their history, fight oppression, and restore equal relations between black men and women.

Speaking of history, oppression, and damaged relations between men and women, it’s worth remembering Karenga’s own past. Paul Mulshine at Front Page Magzine reported on Karenga’s conviction for torturing two women who were members of “US (United Slaves),” a black nationalist cult Karenga founded:

A May 14, 1971, article in the Los Angeles Times described the testimony of one of them: “Deborah Jones, who once was given the Swahili title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis’ mouth and placed against Miss Davis’ face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vise. Karenga, head of US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said.”

Back then, it was relatively easy to get information on the trial. Now it’s almost impossible. It took me two days’ work to find articles about it. The Los Angeles Times seems to have been the only major newspaper that reported it and the stories were buried deep in the paper, which now is available only on microfilm. And the microfilm index doesn’t start until 1972, so it is almost impossible to find the three small articles that cover Karenga’s trial and conviction on charges of torture. That is fortunate for Karenga. The trial showed him to be not just brutal, but deranged. He and three members of his cult had tortured the women in an attempt to find some nonexistent “crystals” of poison. Karenga thought his enemies were out to get him.

And in another lucky break for Karenga, the trial transcript no longer exists. I filed a request for it with the Superior Court of Los Angeles. After a search, the court clerk could find no record of the trial. So the exact words of the black woman who had a hot soldering iron pressed against her face by the man who founded Kwanzaa are now lost to history. The only document the court clerk did find was particularly revealing, however. It was a transcript of Karenga’s sentencing hearing on Sept. 17, 1971.

A key issue was whether Karenga was sane. Judge Arthur L. Alarcon read from a psychiatrist’s report: “Since his admission here he has been isolated and has been exhibiting bizarre behavior, such as staring at the wall, talking to imaginary persons, claiming that he was attacked by dive-bombers and that his attorney was in the next cell. … During part of the interview he would look around as if reacting to hallucination and when the examiner walked away for a moment he began a conversation with a blanket located on his bed, stating that there was someone there and implying indirectly that the ’someone’ was a woman imprisoned with him for some offense. This man now presents a picture which can be considered both paranoid and schizophrenic with hallucinations and elusions, inappropriate affect, disorganization, and impaired contact with the environment.”

Karenga and Kwanzaa are a staple of “diversity” lessons in public schools. Shouldn’t your children’s teachers know the whole story? Read more about Karenga here.

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125pm EDT update. Anti-war ranter Damu Smith just spoke. He seems to have reinvented himself from his days as a Greenpeace agitator.

145pm EDT. Wyclef Jean, Howard Dean’s favorite rapper, sings: “If you not scared of George Bush, you got to stand up.” Calls for withdrawal of troops and sympathizes as “Father Saddam cries in prison.”

10pm EDT. Jim Hoft covers the event the way the rest of the MSM won’t.

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