Stokely Carmichael

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's marriages and divorces[edit]

Ture married singer Miriam Makeba from South Africa in the U.S. in 1968. They divorced in Guinea after separating in 1973.


Later he married Marlyatou Barry, a Guinean doctor. They divorced sometime after having a son, Bokar, in 1981. By 1998, Marlyatou Barry and Bokar were living in Arlington County, Virginia, near Washington, D.C. Using a statement from the All-African People's Revolutionary Party as a reference, Ture's 1998 obituary in The New York Times said he was survived by two sons, Bokar Biro Ture and Alpha Yaya Ture; three sisters; and his mother.^[4]

Legacy[edit]

Ture, along with Charles V. Hamilton,^[90] is credited with coining the phrase "institutional racism", defined as racism that occurs through institutions such as public bodies and corporations, including universities. In the late 1960s Ture defined "institutional racism" as "the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their color, culture or ethnic origin".^[91]


In his book on King, David J. Garrow criticizes Ture's handling of the Black Power movement as "more destructive than constructive".^[6] Garrow describes the period in 1966 when Ture and other SNCC members managed to register 2,600 African American voters in Lowndes County as the most consequential period in Ture's life "in terms of real, positive, tangible influence on people's lives".^[6] Evaluations by Ture's associates are also mixed, with most praising his efforts and others criticizing him for failing to find constructive ways to achieve his objectives.^[92] SNCC's final chair, Phil Hutchings, who expelled Ture over a dispute about the Black Panther Party, wrote, "Even though we kidded and called him 'Starmichael', he could sublimate his ego to get done what was needed to be done....He would say what he thought, and you could disagree with it but you wouldn't cease being a human being and someone with whom he wanted to be in relationship."^[93] Washington Post staff writer Paula Span described Carmichael as someone who was rarely hesitant to push his own ideology.^[6] Tufts University historian Peniel Joseph's biography, Stokely: A Life, says that Black Power activist Ruby Doris Smith Robinson, the first to call him as "Stokely Starmichael," gave him the nickname in protest of his growing ego and that other SNCC staff shared her view.^[94]


Joseph credits Ture with expanding the parameters of the civil rights movement, asserting that his black power strategy "didn't disrupt the civil rights movement. It spoke truth to power to what so many millions of young people were feeling. It actually cast a light on people who were in prisons, people who were welfare rights activists, tenants' rights activists, and also in the international arena." Tavis Smiley calls Ture "one of the most underappreciated, misunderstood, undervalued personalities this country's ever produced".^[56]


In 2002, the American-born scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Ture as one of his 100 Greatest African Americans.^[95]


Ture^[96] is also remembered for his actions in James Meredith's March Against Fear in June 1966, when he issued the call for Black Power. When Meredith got shot, Carmichael came up with the phrase and gathered a crowd to chant it in Greenwood, Mississippi. Already, earlier that day, he had been arrested for the 27th time; he spoke to over 3,000 people that day in the park. Ture was angry that day because black people had been "chanting" freedom for almost six years with no results, so he wanted to change the chant.^[97] He also participated in and contributed to the Black Freedom Struggle. Many people have overlooked his involvement in the movement.^[98] He never switched from left to right in his politics as he got older, and his trajectory both marked and influenced the course of black militancy in the United States. The outrage that most affected him was King's assassination.