Stokely Carmichael

Gifted, handsome, and well-spoken, Stokely Carmichael rose to fame as the chair of the major civil rights group, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, called “Snick”). In contrast to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) and his nonviolent approach, Carmichael became known for his use of the slogan “black power,” which advocated a militant, or aggressive, struggle for liberation from white oppressors. (See Black Power Movement .) Carmichael's quest for black empowerment also included self-reliance among African Americans; pride in African American identity and culture; and a separation from white culture.

Teenage civil rights activist

Carmichael was born on June 29, 1941, in Trinidad. He joined his parents in the United States when he was eleven, living in the Harlem area of New York City. His status as a foreigner and his self-described “hip” demeanor made him popular among his white schoolmates. Carmichael was a bright student. When his family moved to the Bronx, he was admitted to the Bronx High School of Science, a school for gifted youths.

While Carmichael was in high school, the African American civil rights movement was gaining momentum. During Carmichael's senior year, four African American college students staged a sit-in at the whites-only lunch counter at a Woolworth's store in Greensboro, North Carolina . (See Sit-in Movement .) Carmichael joined a national boycott of Woolworth's stores hoping to pressure Woolworth's owners to desegregate all of its stores’ facilities throughout the country. He then traveled to Virginia and South Carolina to join antidiscrimination sit-ins.

Joins SNCC

Because of his growing sensitivity to the plight of blacks in the United States, Carmichael refused offers to attend white colleges and decided to study at the historically black Howard University in Washington, D.C. , where he majored in philosophy. While he was in college, he joined a local organization called the Nonviolent Action Group, or “NAG,” which was affiliated with the Atlanta-based SNCC. In 1961, Carmichael traveled to the South to join the freedom riders , a group of black and white activists who rode interstate buses in an attempt to end segregation policies on buses and in stations. As one of the freedom riders, Carmichael was jailed for forty-nine days in Jackson, Mississippi . He was twenty years old.

Lowndes County Freedom Organization

After graduating in 1964, Carmichael became a full-time organizer for SNCC. He was chosen to direct the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) office in Greenwood, Mississippi, for the Mississippi Freedom Summer voter registration project that year.

Next he devoted himself to SNCC's African American voter registration project in Lowndes County, Alabama . Lowndes County's black residents were poor and landless. Though they were by far the majority of the population, 86 white families owned 90 percent of the land in the county and controlled the government. Few blacks were registered to vote.

When he realized that the Alabama Democratic Party was led by the segregationist and self-proclaimed white supremacists (people who believe white people should rule), Carmichael decided he would not encourage African Americans to register as Democrats. Instead, he helped form an independent party, the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO). The LCFO ran candidates for the offices of sheriff, coroner, tax assessor, tax collector, and three school board seats. His efforts increased the number of registered black voters in the county from 70 to 2,600.

The LCFO chose a snarling black panther as its symbol. Less than two years later, Huey Newton (1942–1989) and Bobby Seale (1937–), black activists in Oakland, California , sought permission to use the LCFO's black panther emblem for their newly formed Black Panther Party .

Turning from nonviolence

In 1965, Carmichael became the president of the SNCC. As the SNCC leader, he was asked to participate in a freedom march in Mississippi that had been the idea of James Meredith (1933–), the first black student to attend the University of Mississippi. Meredith had originally planned to lead the march by himself, but he had been shot when he traveled to Mississippi. He welcomed the help of civil rights leaders King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), along with Floyd McKissick (1922–1991) of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and Carmichael. King and McKissick agreed that the march would be nonviolent and interracial. Carmichael strongly disagreed.

Carmichael's outrage at racism had deepened with his activism. In his years in the Deep South, he saw savage violence, threats, and intimidation doled out to protesters. He began to distance himself from civil disobedience and the nonviolent protest movement. He also became increasingly hostile to the aid offered by white civil rights workers.

Black Power

During the Mississippi freedom march, Carmichael began to articulate his views about “black power” before television cameras, defining “black power” as the right of blacks to define and organize themselves as they saw fit and to protect themselves from racial violence. In his 1967 book Black Power (co-written with Charles V. Hamilton), Carmichael explained further that ending segregation was not the answer to American racism. Carmichael believed that only economic and political independence for African Americans could lead to an end of discrimination and to black empowerment. He was willing to fight for that independence even if it meant creating a separate black nation.

As the revolutionary fervor of the 1960s deepened, SNCC changed course to become a “black power” organization. Carmichael decided not to run for re-election as its leader in 1967. His political emphasis was shifting. He spoke out against the Vietnam War . While he was abroad that year, he spoke out so strongly against U.S. policies and actions that some politicians talked of charging him with treason. Indeed, upon his return in 1968, U.S. marshals confiscated his passport. Meanwhile, the radical Oakland, California-based Black Panther Party made him its honorary prime minister. He resigned from that post the following year, rejecting Panther coalitions with white activists.

Moves to Africa

In 1968, Carmichael married South African singer-activist Miriam Makeba (1932–). The next year, he left the United States for Conakry, Republic of Guinea, in West Africa. There he worked for the restoration to power of the deposed Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972), who shared many of his views about U.S. imperialism.

In Guinea, Carmichael took the name Kwame Turé. Over the next decades, he founded the All-African Revolutionary Party and continued to promote the idea of a black revolution to answer the problems of racism and injustice. In 1996, Carmichael was diagnosed with prostate cancer. The government of Trinidad and Tobago awarded him a $1,000 per month grant to help with medical bills. Groups of his American supporters also pitched in. He died in Guinea in late 1998.