Carmichael, Stokely, 1941-1998

Biographical Note

1941 born in Trinidad
1952 family moved to Harlem, New York and later to the East Bronx
1960 graduated from the Bronx High School of Science
1964 graduated from Howard University with a B.A. in Philosophy
1964 field secretary of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
1966 May elected chairman of SNCC

Kwame Ture (/ˈkwɑːmeɪ ˈtʊəreɪ/; born Stokely Standiford Churchill Carmichael; June 29, 1941 – November 15, 1998) was a prominent organizer in the civil rights movement in the United States and the global pan-African movement. Born in Trinidad, he grew up in the United States from the age of 11 and became an activist while attending the Bronx High School of Science. He was a key leader in the development of the Black Power movement, first while leading the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), then as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party (BPP), and last as a leader of the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP).[1]

Carmichael was one of the original SNCC freedom riders of 1961 under Diane Nash's leadership. He became a major voting rights activist in Mississippi and Alabama after being mentored by Ella Baker and Bob Moses. Like most young people in the SNCC, he became disillusioned with the two-party system after the 1964 Democratic National Convention failed to recognize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party as official delegates from the state. Carmichael eventually decided to develop independent all-black political organizations, such as the Lowndes County Freedom Organization and, for a time, the national Black Panther Party. Inspired by Malcolm X's example, he articulated a philosophy of Black Power, and popularized it both by provocative speeches and more sober writings. Carmichael became one of the most popular and controversial Black leaders of the late 1960s. J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, secretly identified Carmichael as the man most likely to succeed Malcolm X as America's "black messiah".[2] The FBI targeted him for counterintelligence activity through its COINTELPRO program,[2] so Carmichael moved to Africa in 1968. He reestablished himself in Ghana, and then Guinea by 1969.[3] There, he adopted the name Kwame Ture, and began campaigning internationally for revolutionary socialist pan-Africanism. Ture died of prostate cancer in 1998 at the age of 57. Carmichael was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. He attended Tranquility School there before moving to Harlem, New York City, in 1952 at the of age 11, to rejoin his parents. Carmichael attended the Bronx High School of Science in New York, After graduation in 1960, Carmichael enrolled at Howard University, a historically black university in Washington, D.C. At Howard, Carmichael joined the Nonviolent Action Group (NAG), the Howard campus affiliate of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).[13] Kahn introduced Carmichael and the other SNCC activists to Bayard Rustin, an African-American leader who became an influential adviser to SNCC.[14] Inspired by the sit-in movement in the southern United States during college, Carmichael became more active in the Civil Rights Movement. In his first year at Howard, in 1961, Carmichael participated in the Freedom Rides that the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)