I am 3 in 1!

I am Dr. Karanja A. Ajanaku. Karanja means guide. My middle name is Aidoo. It means one who puts things in place; sets things in order. Ajanaku (as redefined here in Memphis) means free and wealthy people.

So I am the guide who sets things in order for free and wealthy people.

I take my name seriously. I have earned the right to do so. I changed my name on Sept. 26, 1986 from Leroy Williams Jr. to Karanja A. Ajanaku. I paid my approximately $42 to the local court system and went through the 15-minute court process.

Leroy Williams Jr.


The judge - Judge James Swearengen - saw me sitting at the back of the courtroom after all other business was concluded.

He said, "Young man. Do you have business with this court?"

I said, "Yes sir. I do."

I took the witness stand and swore to tell the truth about a self determination that I had made.

Judge Swearengen asked me all the questions he legally had to ask. That includes whether I was changing my name for religious purposes or to evade debt.

I told him it wasn't a religious thing and that although I had plenty of debt, I wasn't trying to weasel out of it through a name change.

I brought with me to the court a petition that my sisters in the Ajanaku African American Research Institute (now the Future America Basic Research Institute ) had helped me draft. It included an order to okay the name change. It only needed the judge's signature.

That order reads, in part:
"It appearing to the court that petitioner has all his life used the name of Leroy Williams Jr., and that petitioner was born in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. It further appearing that the said petitioner for good and sufficient cause desires to change the name of Leroy Williams Jr. to Karanja Aidoo Ajanaku, and it appearing to the court that the change of name should be officially noted on the birth certificate of the petitioner."


I changed my name to reflect a discovery I made about who I am. I learned at age 30 that I was an African. Up to that time, it never occurred to me, even though I had personally done genealogy research and had located a great-great-great grandmother, called Sara Brown, who the U.S. Census said was born in Africa.

It did not occur to me, at the time, a quote "educated black man" unquote - that I must be African, at least a little bit.

It wasn't until years later (when) I heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s former secretary - Washiri Ajanaku - the former Francis Sims Bascom - talk to me about her experiences, that I came to consciousness about Africa being in me; about being African.

Dr. Washiri Ajanaku

I mean, after all, I was American. Today, I know there is no conflict between being American and being African. To my way of understanding, America is a civic - government - situation. As a citizen of the United States of America, I have certain rights and responsibilities.


I have the right to be who I am as a cultural being - an African – and the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of being happy.

I am an African culturally, an American civically and human essentially: 3 in 1.