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Stokely Carmichael

1941–1998 · 57 years

The Trinidadian who gave Black Power its name

Portrait of Stokely Carmichael — Unknown author — 1966 — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

His parents left him in Port of Spain when he was two and sent for him at 11. Stokely Carmichael reached New York in 1952, moved from Harlem to an Italian and Jewish stretch of the East Bronx, and became the only Black member of the Morris Park Dukes, a white neighborhood gang that drank and stole. He tested into Bronx Science, then went to Howard University and joined the Nonviolent Action Group, its SNCC affiliate. In June 1961, a first-year student of 19, he rode into Jackson, Mississippi with eight other Freedom Riders, walked into a white cafeteria, and was arrested. He served 49 days at Parchman Farm. He was arrested so often after that he lost count, guessing 29, or 32.

In 1965 he entered Lowndes County, Alabama: majority Black, 70 Black voters registered. A year later, 2,600. The Lowndes County Freedom Organization he helped build put a black panther on the ballot, the emblem Huey Newton and Bobby Seale carried to Oakland. SNCC voted him chairman in May 1966, displacing John Lewis. Two weeks later, on the Meredith March, he was arrested in Greenwood, Mississippi. Released that night, June 16, he told the rally: "This is the twenty-seventh time I have been arrested. I ain't going to jail no more. What we gonna start saying now is Black Power."

The phrase split the movement inside a month. Roy Wilkins, running the NAACP, heard in Black Power a doctrine of separatism and a gift to every segregationist looking for proof that the movement had turned racial — he had already pulled the NAACP off the Meredith March rather than walk behind the armed Deacons for Defense. King thought the words an unfortunate choice, heard as violence and separatism, and warned in public that they would cost the movement the white allies it still needed. Carmichael's case was that integration as practiced asked Black people to abandon their own institutions and petition for entry into somebody else's, that political and economic power had to be built independently before any coalition could be equal, and that in Lowndes County nonviolence had protected nobody.

He left the SNCC chair in 1967, and in 1968 became honorary prime minister of the Black Panther Party. The FBI worked to brand him a CIA agent, and in July 1969 he broke with the Panthers over their alliances with white radicals. By then he and his wife, the singer Miriam Makeba, had settled in Guinea. In 1978 he took the name Kwame Ture, from Kwame Nkrumah and Ahmed Sékou Touré, and gave the last 30 years of his life to the All-African People's Revolutionary Party. He also spoke of Zionists in terms the Anti-Defamation League called plainly antisemitic, which cost him standing he never recovered. He died of prostate cancer in Conakry on November 15, 1998, at 57.

Lifespan

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Stokely Carmichael's life against the full span of the corpus.

Notable works

Lowndes County Freedom Organization other
The all-Black Alabama party whose ballot symbol was a black panther 1965
The Black Power speech at Greenwood speech
Delivered June 16, 1966, hours after an arrest on the Meredith March 1966
Black Power: The Politics of Liberation book
Written with the political scientist Charles V. Hamilton 1967
Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism book
Collected essays, and the turn to socialist Pan-Africanism 1971
Ready for Revolution book
The memoir, written with Ekwueme Michael Thelwell and published after his death 2003

Life in brief

with age at each point

June 29, 1941 aged 0 Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad Raised by his grandmother and two aunts after his parents left for the United States.
1952 aged ~11 Rejoins his parents in New York at 11 Harlem first, then the East Bronx. He tested into Bronx Science four years later.
June 4, 1961 aged 19 Rides into Jackson, Mississippi as a Freedom Rider and is arrested He was 19, and served 49 days at Parchman Farm.
March 23, 1965 aged 23 Leaves the Selma to Montgomery march to organize Lowndes County SCLC had tried the county and failed. Carmichael stayed.
May 1966 aged 24 Elected chairman of SNCC, displacing John Lewis The vote at Kingston Springs, Tennessee, turned the organization toward Black Power.
June 16, 1966 aged 24 Calls for Black Power at a rally in Greenwood, Mississippi He had been arrested that afternoon for trespassing on a school lot.
July 1969 aged 28 Breaks with the Black Panther Party from Guinea He condemned their alliances with white radicals three months after arriving.
1978 aged ~37 Takes the name Kwame Ture For Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Ahmed Sékou Touré of Guinea, his two patrons.
November 15, 1998 aged 57 Dies of prostate cancer in Conakry, Guinea, at 57