Stokely Carmichael

Who was the person who coined the term "institutional racism"? That person was international activist Stokely Carmichael, later known as Kwame Ture. The target of illegal FBI activities and a proponent of increasing Black militance, Carmichael continually evolved the scale of his thinking from US Civil Rights to Pan-Africanism. How did this young activist grow into an international symbol?

Fig.1 - Stokley Carmichael

Stokely Carmichael Beliefs

Born in 1941 in Trinidad and Tobago before immigrating to the United States in 1952, Carmichael was an activist on Black issues from an early age. While a student at the Bronx High School of Science, he boycotted a White Castle restaurant over its racially based hiring policies. At the historically Black Howard University, he became involved in the Civil Rights struggle through a local chapter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). This set the stage for his growth into a Black Power activist and then a Pan-African activist.

Stokely Carmichael Civil Rights

With the SNCC, Carmichael began to take more direct actions, participating in the Freedom Rides. He was arrested roughly 30 times and subjected to various abuses by police and whites who believed in segregation. He spent 53 days of 1961 in Parchman penitentiary in Mississippi for his role in the Freedom Rides and sitting at a Whites only lunch counter. After graduating from Howard University with a degree in philosophy he went full time as an organizer with the SNCC

Fig.2 MFDP Protestors 1964 Democratic Convention

Mississippi

Although he engaged in some activities in Maryland, Carmichael's main focus was voting rights in Mississippi. Black Americans had been largely disenfranchised in Jim Crow Mississippi since 1890. Carmichael worked with an organization known as the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), which tried to set itself up as an alternate, non-discriminatory Democratic Party organization in Mississippi to the recognized state Democratic Party, which was Whites only. He lost faith in the two-party system when the national Democratic Party continued to recognize the existing Mississippi Democratic Party over the MFDP.

Alabama

After leaving the MFDP in 1964, Carmichael moved on to the struggles in Alabama, such as the marches from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. Although now disillusioned of politics, he still led nonviolent resistance to Black voter suppression in Alabama. Early on, he was a part of friction between Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the SNCC when he led an SNCC protest that the SCLC did not approve of at the Alabama State Capitol during the Selma to Montgomery marches. He later focused on Lowndes County, Alabama, helping to form the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO). Brutal repression of Black Americans in Lowndes County had made Civil Rights organizing there extremely difficult, but under the protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Carmichael's own refusal to back down, Black Americans were finally registered to vote in large numbers there.

Stokely Carmichael Black Power

1966 was a significant year for Stokely Carmichael, it was then he became chairman of the SNCC and began to speak openly of Black Power. After Civil Rights leader James Meredith was shot on his "March Against Fear" in 1966, leaders like Carmichael and Martin Luther King came together to finish Meredith's planned route. During this March, Carmichael began speaking of Black Power, which he described as self-reliance on the Black community. As chairman of SNCC he supported removing White members from the organization so that the Black community could become more self-reliant, telling the former members that they should focus on organizing poor Whites.

Non-violence

After witnessing more and more brutality against Civil Rights activists in the form of physical assaults during peaceful protests, Carmichael began to drift from non-violence. King had focused on non-violence as a value of the Civil Rights movement, but Carmichael saw it only as a tool. As he moved into Black Power, he began to describe those who just wanted integration as missing the point of White Supremacy, the rights of Black Americans were not waiting to be given but had been taken.

Fig.3 - SNCC Logo

Stokely Carmichael Accomplishments

As Carmichael became an increasingly notable voice as he moved through different organizations, stepping down as chair of the SNCC in 1967, joining the Black Panthers in 1968, and leaving the SNCC completely in 1968. His focus on Black Power strained his relationship with both groups with events such as his failed attempt to fold the SNCC into the Black Panthers and his criticism that the Black Panthers were too open to work with White groups. He became the target of the FBI, leading to his move to Ghana, where he shifted his focus from Civil Rights in the United States to broader Pan-Africanism and the African Diaspora for the rest of his life.

"Black Messiah" and COINTELPRO

FBI Director was constantly concerned with his idea that a "Black Messiah" would arise to unify Black Power militants into a stronger cohesive force. He identified Carmichael as a candidate for this role and watched his activities closely. The FBI's COINTELPRO targeted Carmichael even years after he left the United States. Hoover used FBI infiltrators in the Black Panthers organization to accuse Carmichael of being a CIA agent, leading to his expulsion from the group.

Black Power: The Politics of Liberation

Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton co-authored the important book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation. The book is especially notable today for coining the term "institutional racism." In the book the authors outlined three major points which were influential on radical politics.

1. Traditional social views should be rethought, and Black people should not seek to integrate themselves into the White middle class
2. Traditional power structures need to be reconsidered because the work done within them by Civil Rights groups had only minimal results
3. Black Americans must build their own separate economic and political communities to an equal power of White Americans before they can achieve a meaningful coalition between Blacks and Whites.

Fig.4 - Stokley Carmichael in Algiers

Ghana

In 1969 Carmichael relocated to Ghana where he came under two important mentors. These were the President of Guinea Ahmed Sékou Touré and the former President of Ghana Kwame Nkrumah. He became an aide of Touré and changed his name to Kwame Ture to honor the men, while his wife became Guinea's representative to the UN. Touré may have aligned with Carmichael's beliefs by opposing colonialism and nationalizing many industries, but his regime brutally repressed all dissent, killing 50,000 people and burying many in mass graves.

All-African People's Revolutionary Party

Nkrumah organized the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (AAPRP) in Guinea in 1968 to pursue the goals of socialism and self-determination on the African continent in the form of Pan-Africanism, based on Nkrumah's 1968 book Handbook on Revolutionary Warfare. After his arrival in Africa, Carmichael spent the rest of his life promoting the organization internationally. He returned to the United States many times to make speeches advocating its ideas, often at his alma mater, Howard University.

Stokely Carmichael Death

Carmichael died of prostate cancer in 1998. After his 1996 cancer diagnosis, he was treated in Cuba and New York with support from benefit concerts, the Nation of Islam, and the government of Trinidad and Tobago.