Make 'Em Uum Mau Mau
Ray Wood may not be the only BOSS player that connects the story of Malcolm X to that of CORE. There is also Charles 37X Kenyatta.

Often referred to in the press and by historians as a bodyguard and aide to Malcolm X, Kenyatta was one of the members of Temple #7 that left to follow him into his Muslim Mosque, Inc. After the assassination, Kenyatta started his own group, the Harlem Mau Mau Society, more generally known as the Mau Maus. A small paramilitary group that existed to not only fight against white supremacy but drugs and crime in Harlem as well, it often provided protection to other Black leaders in the city.(75)

It provided security at the 1967 Black Power conference in Newark of which Omar Abu Ahmed, then the chairman of East River CORE in Harlem was one of the main organizers.(76)

Kenyatta and the Mau Maus supported Herman Ferguson and his co-defendants during their trial for conspiracy in 1967. He also worked closely with Harlem CORE on several campaigns such as its 1968 demonstrations against Columbia University's expansion plans and its 1971 demonstrations against Harlem Hospital.(77)

The Mau Maus could also be on occasion be just as negative a force. Members were also noted for playing a very disruptive role in attacking White reporters at the Newark Black Power conference. James Farmer notes how several Mau Maus walked up to him on the street in Harlem and threatened his life, one reason being he had a White wife.(78)

Kenyatta is named as an informant for BOSS by Prof. Manning Marable in his book Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention.(79)

Marable's source is Kenyatta's FBI file. However, this is complicated by the fact that the Mau Mau's were targeted by COINTELPRO as threats to national security just like SNCC, NOI, the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) and the Black Panther Party (BPP). To make things even more problematic is a 1967 COINTELPRO document in Herman Ferguson's autobiography which states the FBI was planning on putting a rumor in Ferguson's ear that Kenyatta was going to try and kill him. This was a standard COINTELPRO tactic to spread such rumors in the hopes of turning one group or activist against another resulting in murder.(80)

Kenyatta was working for one law enforcement agency while being targeted and falsely set up by another. The one problem with this is the only source of information is the law enforcement agencies themselves, agencies that by their own admission had consciously released disinformation and lies while designating Kenyatta an enemy. Should Marable's assertion then that Kenyatta was an informant be accepted as true?

If he was an informant was he gathering information on any of the CORE groups? Did his actions have a negative effect on any of the CORE people?

I would suggest there is more to the story of Kenyatta's relationship to the police and FBI than has been reported by Prof. Marable. Once his archival materials are opened to the public by Columbia University there will be a better understanding as to how and why he reached the conclusions he did.

The C.R.E.A.M. of the Planet Earth
If so many of these CORE members were such strong supporters of Malcolm X, then why did CORE invite the NOI to its first function as a Black Power organization?

At its 1966 national convention held July 1-4 in Baltimore, CORE elected McKissick as its national director and officially aligned itself with Black Power. It also had a local leader of the NOI there as a speaker along with leaders from the other civil rights organizations.(81)

This seems like an obvious slap in the face to so many CORE members not just because of the predicted effect this would have had on the White members but also because it was little more than a year after the assassination of Malcolm X by members of the NOI.

Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that the then minister of Malcolm's former mosque Temple #7, Louis Farrakhan, who many have speculated for years was somehow indirectly involved in the assassination, was listed on a 1968 flyer promoting a rally by Harlem CORE's demonstrations against Columbia University's expansion plans. In fact, his was the first name among the planned speakers right alongside McKissick and his soon to be successor Roy Innis, Harlem CORE chairman Victor Solomon, former chapter chairman Marshall England and James Farmer.(82)

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