Stokely Carmichael

Radical activist, born in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. He emigrated to the USA in 1952, and was shocked by the racism he encountered. Involved in Civil Rights while attending Howard University (1960–4), he was elected leader of the Student Nonviolent Co-ordinating Committee, and changed the group's focus from integration to black liberation. He popularized the phrase ‘black power’, and as a Black Panther came to symbolize black violence to many whites. He later favoured forging alliances with radical whites, which led to his resignation from the Panthers in 1968. He and his wife, Miriam Makeba, moved to Guinea in 1969, where he supported Pan-Africanism, and changed his name (after Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Sekou Toure of Guinea).

Stokely Carmichael (June 29, 1941 – November 15, 1998), also known as Kwame Ture, was a Trinidadian-American black activist and leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panther Party. He later became a black separatist and a Pan-Africanist.

Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, Carmichael moved with his family to New York in 1952, when he was eleven.

After having helped organize voting rights drives in Mississippi in 1964, in Selma in 1965, and in Lowndes County, Alabama in 1966, he became chair of SNCC in 1966, taking over from John Lewis. A few weeks after Carmichael took over SNCC, James Meredith was shot by a sniper during his solitary "March Against Fear". on his release, he gave his "Black Power" speech, using that phrase to urge black pride and independence:

"It is a call for black people in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community. It is a call for black people to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations."

While Black Power was not a new concept, Carmichael's speech brought it into the spotlight and it became a rallying cry for young African Americans across the country.

Carmichael saw nonviolence as a tactic as opposed to a principle, which separated him from moderate civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr..

According to Bearing the Cross (1986), David J. Garrow's Pulitzer Prize winning book about the Civil Rights movement, a few days after Carmichael used the "Black Power" slogan at the "Meredith March Against Fear", he reportedly told King, "Martin, I deliberately decided to raise this issue on the march in order to give it a national forum and force you to take a stand for Black Power."

In 1967, Carmichael stepped down from leadership of SNCC. He joined the Black Panther Party and became a strong critic of the Vietnam War. Carmichael was made an honorary prime minister of the Black Panthers in 1968.

In 1969, Carmichael and his then-wife, the South African singer, Miriam Makeba, moved to Guinea, in West Africa, and he became an aide to Guinean prime minister, Ahmed Sékou Touré. There, in 1971, he wrote the book, Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism.

He died of prostate cancer at the age of 57 in Conakry, Guinea.

Stokely Carmichael is credited for coining the phrase institutional racism.

Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson gave a speech celebrating Ture's life, stating: "He was one of our generation who was determined to give his life to transforming America and Africa.