Stokely Carmichael

• Born: June 29, 1941
• Birthplace: Port of Spain, Trinidad
• Died: November 15, 1998
• Place of death: Conakry, Guinea

Activist

Carmichael symbolized a new direction in the civil rights struggle in 1966 when, as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, he espoused “black power.” Charismatic and cosmopolitan, he was one of the prominent political figures of the 1960’s. Carmichael later became an advocate of pan-African socialist revolution, moved to the African nation of Guinea, and took the name Kwame Toure.

Areas of achievement: Civil rights; Social issues

Early Life

Stokely Standiford Churchill Carmichael (STOH-klee STAN-dih-fohrd CHUR-chihl KAHR-mi-kul) was born in 1941 in Port of Spain, Trinidad, to Adolphus and Mabel Charles Carmichael. Adolphus worked as a master carpenter, Mabel as a steamship stewardess. When Stokely Carmichael was young, his parents immigrated to the United States and settled in Harlem, New York. Carmichael remained in Trinidad with his two sisters to be raised by his grandmother and two aunts. Although Carmichael attended the prestigious British Tranquility Boys Intermediate School, he was enraged by the colonial stratification he saw on Trinidad. When he was eleven, he immigrated to the United States to be reunited with his parents. The following year, his family moved to the well-established Morris Park neighborhood in the Bronx, New York.

In 1954, Carmichael became a naturalized U.S. citizen. He attended the Bronx High School of Science, a specialized, selective public school. At the time, Bronx High School of Science was one of the most prestigious high schools in New York; it produced a number of Nobel Prize winners. In his autobiography, Carmichael described this exceptional school as essential to his intellectual awakening.

In 1960, Carmichael received a scholarship to attend Howard University. There he joined the Nonviolent Action Group, a civil rights group that engaged in such protest actions as sit-ins, boycotts, and demonstrations. During the summers, he became a Freedom Rider, traveling to the South to assist in registering African American voters under the auspices of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). On several of his trips, he was arrested and jailed, at one time spending forty-nine days in Mississippi’s infamous Parchman Penitentiary. After Carmichael graduated from Howard in 1964 with a degree in philosophy, he became a full-time worker for SNCC, organizing volunteers to travel to the South to teach and to register voters.

Life’s Work

Carmichael’s leadership, speaking ability, and charisma were quickly recognized. He became a regional director of SNCC, with his headquarters in Lowndes County, Mississippi. In its short history, SNCC had had only two elected officials: executive secretary James Forman and chairman John Lewis. In 1966, Carmichael was elected the chairman of SNCC. As chairman, he delivered a speech in Greenwood County, Mississippi, on July 28, 1966, in which he called for “black power.” Although Carmichael did not coin the phrase, his use of it electrified his audience. For Carmichael and others, it meant a new phase in the Civil Rights movement, moving from the goal of integration to black liberation and Black Nationalism. In Carmichael’s mind, it also represented a repudiation of SNCC’s founding principle of nonviolence and a shift to a belief in force to achieve progress. As such, he and others moved SNCC away from groups such as CORE and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., and toward more radical groups such as the Black Panthers. Indeed, the Black Panther Party adopted its name from an earlier use of the panther symbol by Carmichael in Lowndes, Mississippi. His call for SNCC’s amalgamation with the Black Panther Party, however, was not a success. Facing both personal and ideological opposition in SNCC, he resigned as chairman in May, 1967. Shortly thereafter, his ties with SNCC were severed, and he became the honorary prime minister of the Black Panther Party.

In 1967, Carmichael published his book Black Power to explain the term, which he described as a call for blacks to build their own society and culture, rejecting the racist institutions of white America. At the height of his popularity in 1967, he embarked on a world tour. He visited Cuba and met with its president, Fidel Castro. Carmichael was thrilled with the Cuban Revolution and gave an interview in which he called for the destruction of capitalism. He also called for guerrilla warfare against the United States. Carmichael visited Hanoi to meet with the leaders of North Vietnam, which was then engaged in a war with the United States. In his autobiography, he described Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh as “a great man,” admiring Ho’s claim that he instructed his soldiers to show concern for the welfare of African American soldiers in the U.S. military and not to shoot them. Carmichael also visited Algeria, home of Frantz Fanon, author of Wretched of the Earth, an inspiration to Carmichael. Carmichael then traveled to Guinea, where he met another idol, Kwame Nkrumah. Nkrumah was the exiled leader of Ghana, who had founded the Marxist All-African People’s Revolutionary Party. Carmichael visited Tanzania before returning to the United States. On his trip, he met the popular South African singer Miriam Makeba. They soon married and had one child.

Upon his return, Carmichael found himself in disagreement with the Black Panthers, who were focused on violent struggle in the United States. In his overseas trip, Carmichael had come to believe that the heart of the struggle was in Africa, the motherland of the black diaspora. Although he espoused a Marxist perspective, he looked to flavor it with African communalism. He believed the People’s Revolutionary Republic of Guinea to be in the vanguard of the emergence of African socialism. In 1969, he moved to Guinea at the invitation of President Ahmed Sekou Toure and adopted a new name, Kwame Toure, derived from its two leaders. Carmichael and Makeba settled in the capital city of Conakry.

In 1971, Carmichael published a collection of his speeches and essays, Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism. He visited the United States as a popular speaker on college campuses, although his unremitting enmity toward Zionism aroused opposition. In Guinea he joined Nkrumah’s All-African People’s Revolutionary Party. He and Makeba were divorced in 1979. In 1980, he married a native Guinean, Marliatou Barre, a physician. They had one child, Boabacar “Bocar” Biro, in 1982. Some time thereafter, Carmichael and Barre separated; Barre and Boabacar moved to the United States and lived in Arlington, Virginia.

Carmichael’s fortunes fell with those of Guinea, as the country descended into poverty and repression. His trips to the United States became focused on pan-Africanism. He tried to organize a Black United Front Party in alliance with the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party but met with little success. After President Toure’s death in 1984, a military regime seized power and denounced socialism. Briefly arrested, Carmichael was left without political support.

In his fifties, Carmichael contracted prostate cancer. He received treatment in New York City over the course of two years. To the end, he remained a spokesman for both pan-Africanism and socialist revolution. On his death bed, he wrote his final words, calling for “One United Socialist Africa.” Carmichael died in Conakry, Guinea, on November 15, 1998.

Significance

Carmichael was one of the young leaders who helped change the direction of the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. A forceful speaker, he moved the SNCC from affiliation with CORE and the NAACP to an alliance with the Black Panther party. He popularized the term “black power,” epitomizing the shift from the fight for integration to Black Nationalism and separatism. Attractive, cosmopolitan, charismatic, he was a popular speaker on college campuses. He was intellectually agile, yet his rhetoric struck fear in Middle America. He was one of the first to link the Civil Rights movement to outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War. His alliance with the Black Panthers was short-lived, as Carmichael shifted from a focus on black empowerment in the United States to pan-Africanism and support for worldwide socialism. He hoped to build support for pan-African socialism, but his efforts in the United States met with little interest. His disappearance from the civil rights arena in the United States mystified many of his former supporters. With the fall of his Marxist patrons in Guinea, it became clear that however important his influence in the 1960’s, his time had passed.

Bibliography

Branch, Taylor. At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007. The third and final volume of the Pulitzer Prize-winning account of Martin Luther King, Jr., and his nonviolent civil rights movement. This volumes contrasts the nonviolent leadership approach of King and the increasing militancy of Carmichael.

Carmichael, Stokely. Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism. Foreword by Mumia Abu-Jamal. Reprint. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2007. Reprint of 1971 collection of historic letters, articles, and speeches by Carmichael, illustrating his move toward pan-Africanism.

Carmichael, Stokely, and Ekwueme Thelwell. Ready for Revolution: The Life and Times of Stokely Carmichael. New York: Scribner, 2005. Carmichael’s lengthy autobiography, dictated shortly before his death in 1998. He reviews the dramatic events of his life and meetings with significant figures, while maintaining a focus on his belief in pan-African socialism.

Clayborne, Carson. In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995. Analyzing the rise and fall of the SNCC, Clayborne probes the inner dynamics of the group as it moved from reform to revolt and vacillated between following charismatic leaders like Carmichael and group leadership.

Johnson, Jacqueline. Stokely Carmichael: The Story of Black Power. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Silver Burdett Press, 1990. A biography for young readers with an introduction by civil rights leader Andrew Young and a timeline of Carmichael’s life.

Joseph, Peniel. Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama. Philadelphia: Basic Civitas Books, 2010. Examines the history of the Black Power movement through a comparison of three African American leaders: Malcolm X, Carmichael, and Barack Obama.