Renowned writer, educator and publisher Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu, 71, made his transition, departing this life on April 25 after decades of dedication addressing the ills afflicting Black people in the United States.
His publishing company, African American Images, announced on its website, “It is with deep sadness that African American Images, Inc. is mourning the passing of its President and Founder, Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu. Do keep the team in your thoughts and prayers.”
Author of more than 40 books — including national best sellers such as his “100 Plus Educational Strategies to Teach Children of Color,” his book “Black Economics:
Solutions for Economic and Community Empowerment,” and the iconic series, “Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys” — his impact in the world of academia and Black culture was impactful.
“Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu was pivotal in our understanding of how to educate Black boys,” economist and educator Dr. Julianne Malveaux told The Final Call. She stated though there were times she disagreed with him, “I very much appreciated his approach and the fact that we have to pay attention to our men, as well as to our women,” she said.
“He has a body of work that is profound and comprehensive, and I would invite people to go back and look at some of his work. He was an amazing and riveting speaker. And he was able to galvanize people to talk about our young people in education,”
Dr. Malveaux added. “As we’re learning now, in this era of ignorance, education is more important than ever. It doesn’t necessarily have to come from the Department of Education or from our public schools.
Much of the attitude of education must come from us. And that was the philosophy of Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu,” she concluded.
Many of Dr. Kunjufu’s works were published in the 1980s and 1990s, but decades later, new generations of Black educators are still benefiting from his work.
Brother Salih Muhammad, 33, is a teacher and educator based in California. “Dr. Kunjufu’s impact on the education of Black children is unmistakable. He has been a premier standard of Black scholarship, whose scholarship still retains as much poignancy today as it did yesterday,” he said.
“I will never forget my first read of ‘Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys,’ which continues to be a guidepost as the country struggles to bridge the educational gulf between Black males and their academic success. He has been a scholar of unparalleled magnitude.”
Dr. Rosie Milligan, author, business and financial educator, and founder of the Black Writers on Tour annual book conference, is saddened by Dr. Kunjufu’s death but said his legacy will live on.
“Dr. Kunjufu was one of the men who focused more than any writer I know with trying to uplift and to counter our Black boys—those who have been undermined and most represented in the media and who’ve gotten a bad rap,” Dr. Milligan told The Final Call.
His work to raise the alarm about statistics on the incarceration of Black boys by certain ages is also pivotal, explained Dr. Milligan. “He would always help us to see that if 25% are going to prison, what about the 75%? Why aren’t we talking about the 75%,” she stated.
Dr. Milligan also remarked about the significance of “Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys.”
“When we fix the lives of Black boys, then we have healthy and strong Black men. And that’s when we build a healthy community, so I appreciate his work and I just hope those who didn’t get a chance to embrace him, as educators, as community, as leaders, I hope (they do so) even now,”
Said Dr. Milligan. She added, “Sometimes our work only comes to reach its highest height after we have made our transition, but that’s what legacy is all about. Legacy is about when you’re gone, then whatever you’re working for, we live on.”
A revolutionary Black educator Journalist Doshon Farad of MX Network Television described Dr. Kunjufu’s legacy as iconic.
“He was able to pinpoint exactly what was taking place with our Black boys within the school systems,” he said to The Final Call. Mr. Farad explained that Dr. Kunjufu’s work testifies to what the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad of the Nation of Islam had previously established in terms of study and thought about the education of Black children.
The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught that for Black children, particularly Black boys, America’s schools were “the killing fields.” The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s solution was to establish an independent school system for Black children.
Dr. Kunjufu’s writings were inspired by the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s statement and view regarding the “killing fields,” of America’s school systems and Black youth.
“As a journalist, he said Dr. Kunjufu inspired him to focus on “other revolutionary Black educators across America.” Aspiring Black educators can use Dr. Kunjufu as a model, he said. “I recommend that aspiring Black educators study his life and works very closely,” he added.
The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, National Representative of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, has warned the Black community for years about America’s targeted attack on Black youth and the failures of America’s educational system.
“The methodology and psychology of this archaic educational system is unfit and ill-prepared to deal with the new minds that an information society is producing,”
Minister Farrakhan stated in a message, titled “Policies for Empowerment: The Struggle for a New Economic Order” delivered March 10, 2006, at the National Black People’s Unity Convention held at Westside High School in Gary, Indiana.
“When you send your child to school, and he’s very ‘rambunctious,’ educators will tell you, ‘Mother, you must come up to the school because your child is presenting us with a problem. We think he needs some Ritalin…’
According to published reports, scientists did a chemical analysis of Ritalin, and said it has the same effect on your system as cocaine. So, because the teacher can’t cope with the new mind, you dumb it down so you can ‘deal’ with it. This is a system that must be thrown in the garbage pail,” Minister Farrakhan said.
The work of Dr. Kunjufu was one that exposed the deficiencies of how America’s educational system has failed Black children but his work also laid out methods on how to educate Black children properly.
Nation of Islam Student Minister Demetric Muhammad is an author and researcher. He reflected on Dr. Kunjufu’s pioneering legacy regarding Black boys.
“His work in that regard is some of my favorite work because it harmonized with what Minister Farrakhan has taught us over the years about how in American society, the Black male has been a target of the rulers of America, and the Black male has been a target for neutralization and for destruction,” he said to The Final Call.
“Dr. Kunjufu did a lot of research and used a lot of his experience in the educational system to go into the specifics of that onslaught against Black boys and Black men, to really arm parents, community stakeholders, clergy and all of the various stakeholders within the Black community. He alerted us and gave us the specifics of what was happening to our sons.”
In continuing Dr. Kunjufu’s legacy, Student Min. Demetric Muhammad believes Black people should take time to study his life and works.
“We have a duty to make sure that those that don’t know him, know him and know his work, and we have a duty to allow what Dr. Kunjufu did to be a baton that we can pass on to younger educators, younger researchers, younger preachers and pastors and ministers and imams because we’re still in the fight for a total liberation of our people.”
A truth-teller and ‘educator’s educator’
Dr. Opio Sokoni is the general manager for the historic Florida Star newspaper in Jacksonville, Florida, and owner of SRA Wire service. Dr. Sokoni told The Final Call that Dr. Kunjufu recognized that educating Black people about their history and beauty is essential for building self-esteem and motivation.
“He understood the insidious efforts of those who aim to undermine our worth and contributions to civilization. Through his studies, he illuminated the truth and empowered us to counteract the psychological damage inflicted by ignorance and racism,” he said.
Dr. Sokoni stated that Dr. Kunjufu’s writings, “serve as a powerful weapon in the ongoing struggle for Black empowerment and dignity.”
“Jawanza was an educator’s educator,” Dr. Ray Winbush, director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland, told The Final Call.
“Like he used to always say, ‘you can’t teach what you don’t know’ and so he had to educate teachers to teach them how to teach Black kids, particularly Black males, and he was a master at doing that,” reflected Dr. Winbush. Dr. Winbush said he invited Dr. Kunjufu to speak at every university he has ever taught at over the years. “I had a high respect for him,” said Dr. Winbush.
The work of Dr. Kunjufu in advocating a curriculum geared toward Black children was and is relevant. He emphasized in his presentations, work, and books the importance of Black parents and educators having control of how Black children are educated.
He pushed for a culturally centered education appropriate for Black children and challenged the curriculum as being too European-centered.
Dr. Harry Singleton, professor of African American Studies and Religious Studies at the University of South Carolina, called the death of Dr. Kunjufu “a big loss” to the Black community. Dr. Singleton called Dr. Kunjufu’s contribution “unique,” and added, “we’re grateful to him.”
Sister Dr. Khalilah Muhammad is a college English professor based in Chicago. She reflected on the impact of Dr. Kunjufu on her academic journey.
“As I thought more about, and researched, Dr Jawanza Kunjufu’s name, my mind was flooded with many childhood memories. In fact, I recall receiving one of his most famous texts: ‘To be Popular or Smart:
The Black Peer Group.’ This book was given to me by my parents, so that I would not succumb to the negative peer pressure that one can feel in high school or college even,” she told The Final Call.
“His legacy can be summed up in three words: achieve Black excellence,” she added.
Longtime activist Kamm Howard of Reparations United shared that society was afraid of young, Black males during the time Dr. Kunjufu was writing many of his books. “He knew that that image was false,” said Mr. Howard.
“Black America was also believing in that false image about young Black men being criminal and violent and he knew that that was something that was manufactured and that it was harmful to the future of these young men, and especially at the very juvenile age, that these negative images would harm them.”
He recalled Dr. Kunjufu’s theory on White America and White institutions setting up young Black men to be funneled into the criminal justice system and how, by the time they got to the third grade, they would have already been “infected with this negative, false image of themselves.”
For Mr. Howard, Dr. Kunjufu’s work is still applicable today, due to the generations of Black men and boys still adversely affected and harmed in America’s educational system.
“We need to continue to learn from Dr Kunjufu because the system that was in place then is still in place now, and it’s still negatively harming Black boys who would become young Black men who are unemployable, non-marriage material.
They will continue to impregnate sisters and not take care of children, and then the cycle just continues,” he said. “We have to learn from Dr. Kunjufu and really understand that this is cyclical and that we have to use some of this thought around breaking the cycle.”
Social media reflections
Black people across all walks of life have been sharing testimonies on social media of how Dr. Kunjufu’s work impacted them.
On X, rapper Chuck D. called the scholar one of his superheroes. Educator Baruti Kafele described Dr. Kunjufu as his educational idol and a prolific writer whose works on Black youth are unmatched. He met Dr. Kunjufu around 2009 at the National Alliance of Black School Educators Conference.
“I cannot overstate how much of this brother’s work influenced mine. For those of you who know my books, you know that I keep them thin. I learned this from Jawanza back in the 80’s and it worked for me.
Since 1986, I knew I wanted to be an education speaker / consultant and during the 80’s and early 90’s while I was developing as a man and an educator, Jawanza was the only Black man that I saw in that space. Through him, I saw the future me,” Mr. Kafele shared on X.
Dr. Ken Harris, president and CEO of The National Business League, commemorated Dr. Kunjufu for a “job well done.”
“What a life. What a legacy. What an impact. A true scholar of the streets, Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu touched the people directly,” he posted on X. “As a young man at Clark Atlanta University (HBCU), one of the most transformative lectures I ever witnessed was from Dr. Kunjufu.
His fiery insights into Black economics, empowerment and ownership helped shape my journey into economics and Black business development.”
He called Dr. Kunjufu’s book “Black Economics: Solutions for Economic and Community Empowerment” a game-changer that exposed systemic disparities.
“Dr. Kunjufu challenged us to think deeper, build boldly, and reclaim our power. From ‘The Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys’ to his tireless advocacy for our youth,” he shared.
