Kwanguvu, Umoja, 1925-

Umoja Kwanguvu, born William DeVaughn Jones, grew up in Birmingham, Ala. In the 1940s and 1950s, he served briefly in the Army and Air Force before earning his English degree from Miles College. Throughout his life, he has been sensitive to and enraged by racial inequality. In the early 1960s, he participated in the March on Washington and the Hattiesburg Freedom Summer. Kwanguvu taught in Georgia, Alabama, and New York before retiring from an administrative position at LaGuardia Community College in 1994.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, as William DeVaughn Jones, Kwanguvu spent much of his life as a civil rights activist beginning in the 1950s. He participated in Mississippi Freedom Summer project activities as a Freedom School teacher in Hattiesburg. He died in 2001 after a career in education in New York.