Stokely Carmichael

Stokely Carmichael, also known as Kwame Ture (or Toure) (1941-1998), black civil rights activist and writer. At the age of 11, Stokely Carmichael left Trinidad to come with his family to New York City. His parents encouraged him to succeed by excelling in school, and Carmichael won admission in 1956 to the selective Bronx High School of Science, where he was one of only about 50 black students among the several thousand students enrolled.

In 1960 Carmichael decided to attend Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he soon became active in the civil rights movement. Along with other students, he participated in sit-ins designed to end racial segregation, or the separation of blacks and whites. He joined the Nonviolent Action Group in Washington, which was affiliated with the student-led Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In 1961 he participated in the Freedom Rides, a campaign against segregation in interstate transportation. He was arrested when he attempted to integrate a bus terminal in Jackson, Mississippi, and spent most of his summer vacation in a Mississippi jail. While participating in the civil rights movement, Carmichael also continued his academic studies, graduating from Howard in 1964, with a degree in philosophy.

After leaving college, Carmichael became a field secretary for SNCC, and worked in the campaign to register blacks in Mississippi to vote. During the summer of 1964, he took part in a Freedom Summer project designed to register blacks and build support for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). Unlike the regular all-white Democratic Party in the state, the MFDP allow people of all races to join. However, national Democratic leaders, such as President Lyndon Johnson, failed to support the MFDP effort to be seated in the place of the regulars at the 1964 national Democratic Convention.

In 1965 Carmichael moved to Alabama to work in the voting rights campaign and helped organize the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO). It became known as the Black Panther Party because it used the panther as a symbol. This symbol was later adopted by the Black Panther Party formed in California. His success in attracting black support for the LCFO led to his election in May 1966 as chairperson of SNCC.

Soon after his election, he gained national attention when he began to call for Black Power during a voting rights march through Mississippi. Black Power was an attractive slogan for many blacks because it did not rely on nonviolence but called for blacks to defend themselves against white violence; it also called for black economic and political independence. Carmichael’s numerous impassioned speeches led many blacks to see him as a symbol of black militancy and a worthy successor to Malcolm X, the black Muslim leader. He explained his political position in Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (1967), a book written with political scientist Charles V. Hamilton. After serving a year as SNCC’s chairperson, Carmichael toured many socialist nations during 1967, occasionally attracting controversy by calling for a black revolution in the United States.

In February 1968 Carmichael became prime minister of the Black Panther Party that had been organized in Oakland, California, by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. He spoke at many rallies to free Newton who had been imprisoned on murder charges. Carmichael began to disagree with some Black Panther members believing that the party should emphasized racial unity and not work with white activists. The Black Panthers emphasized class unity and favored alliances with white activists. Because of these ideological differences, Carmichael resigned from the Black Panther Party in 1969.

The same year, Carmichael began to work in Africa and eventually changed his name to Kwame Ture (or Toure), a name derived from two African leaders, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Sékou Touré of Guinea. Inspired by his association with these leaders, Carmichael became a proponent of Pan-Africanism, the belief that African people throughout the world should unite. He became a member of the Central Committee of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party and continued to work with this international group during the 1970s and afterwards. In 1969 he established his permanent home in Guinea although he returned occasionally to the United States to lecture.