Black Power Beyond the Slogan

Abstract

Born in Trinidad in 1941, Stokely Carmichael immigrated to the United States in 1952, where he would become a key figure in both the civil rights and Black Power movements. As an activist with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Carmichael participated in many of the epic battles of the heroic phase of the movement, including the Freedom Rides. By 1966, however, largely disenchanted with the gains of the civil rights movement, he would become one of the key spokespersons for a nascent but nonetheless vibrant Black Power movement, after his call for Black Power in Greenwood, Mississippi introduced Black Power to the nation. After working to develop a blueprint for achieving Black Power, including the publication of the book Black Power with Howard University Political Scientist Charles V. Hamilton, he would eventually change his name to Kwame Ture and move to Guinea, where he died from prostate cancer at the age of fifty-seven, still an unrepentant critic of American racism and imperialism. His life has recently become the work of Peniel Joseph. In 2001, in the midst of an explosion of scholarship examining issues related to the Black Power movement, Peniel Joseph published an influential article in Black Scholar that outlined the contours of what would become the historical subfield of Black Power Studies. In it, Joseph called for an interrogation of the local, national, and international roots of Black Power. Over the course of the next thirteen years, his trailblazing scholarship has continued to deepen our understanding of the movement, the period, and its leading figures. His award-winning 2006 book, Waiting ’Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America, laid the basis for his most recent publication, Stokely: A Life. Joseph recently sat down for an interview with Dr. Yohuru Williams, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professor of History at Fairfield University. They discuss Joseph’s motivations for writing about Stokely Carmichael, as well as new directions he sees emerging in Black Power Studies.