Stokely Carmichael

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Stokely Carmichael bigraphy, stories - Activists

Stokely Carmichael : biography

June 29, 1941 – November 15, 1998

Stokely Carmichael (also Kwame Ture; June 29, 1941November 15, 1998) was a Trinidadian-American black activist active in the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement. Growing up in the United States from the age of eleven, he graduated from Howard University and rose to prominence in the civil rights and Black Power movements, first as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced "snick") and later as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party.

Politics after SNCC

After leaving SNCC, Carmichael wrote the book Black Power (1967) with Charles V. Hamilton while clarifying his thinking. He also became a strong critic of the Vietnam War. During this period he traveled and lectured extensively throughout the world; visiting Guinea, North Vietnam, China, and Cuba. Carmichael became more clearly identified with the Black Panther Party as its "Honorary Prime Minister." During this period, he acted more as a speaker than an organizer, traveling throughout the country and internationally advocating for his vision of Black Power., Charlie Cobb, From Stokely Carmichael to Kwame Ture. Accessed 17 March 2007.

Carmichael lamented the 1967 execution of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, saying:

Vietnam

Carmichael joined Martin Luther King Jr. in New York on April 15, 1967 to share his views with protesters on race related to the Vietnam War:

Visit to Britain

Carmichael visited Britain in July 1967 to attend the Dialectics of Liberation conference. Recordings of his speeches were released by the organisers, the Institute of Phenomenological Studies. Carmichael was banned from re-entering Britain.

1968 D.C. riots

Carmichael was present in D.C. the night after King’s assassination. He led a group through the streets, demanding that businesses close out of respect. Although he tried to prevent violence, the situation escalated beyond his control. Due to Carmichael’s reputation as a provocateur, the news media blamed him for the ensuing violence as mobs rioted along U Street and other areas of black development.

Carmichael held a press conference the next day, at which he predicted mass racial violence in the streets.

Since moving to Washington, D.C., Carmichael had been under nearly constant surveillance by the FBI. After the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Hoover instructed a team of agents to find evidence connecting Carmichael to the rioting. A 1968 memo from Hoover suggests his fears that Carmichael would become a black nationalist "messiah".

Self-imposed exile

Carmichael soon began to distance himself from the Panthers. He disagreed with them about whether white activists should be allowed to help them. The Panthers believed that white activists could help the movement, while Carmichael had come to agree with Malcolm X, and said that the white activists should organize their own communities first. In 1969, he and his wife, Miriam Makeba, a noted singer from South Africa, left the US for Guinea-Conakry. Carmichael became an aide to the Guinean prime minister Ahmed Sékou Touré, and a student of the exiled Ghanaian president, Kwame Nkrumah., New York Times Book review. Accessed 17 March 2007. Makeba was appointed Guinea’s official delegate to the United Nations. undated biography at Answers.Com. Accessed June 27, 2007. Three months after his arrival in Guinea, in July 1969, Carmichael published a formal rejection of the Black Panthers, condemning them for not being separatist enough and for their "dogmatic party line favoring alliances with white radicals".

Carmichael changed his name to Kwame Ture, to honor the African leaders Nkrumah and Touré, who had become his patrons. At the end of his life, friends still referred to him interchangeably by both names, "and he doesn’t seem to mind."

Carmichael remained in Guinea after separation from the Black Panther Party. He continued to travel, write, and speak in support of international leftist movements. In 1971 he collected his essays in a second book, Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism. This book expounds an explicitly socialist, Pan-African vision, which he retained for the rest of his life. From the late 1970s until the day he died, he answered his phone by announcing, "Ready for the revolution!"