Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And this is
Speaker 1: another installment of our Black History series. And I hope
Speaker 1: you've listened to the Marcus Garvey episode by now, because
Speaker 1: then it we talked about the beginnings of the first
Speaker 1: major black nationalist movement of the twentieth century. And now
Speaker 1: we're gonna follow the movement's progress into the sixties and
Speaker 1: seventies and catch up with the mainstream civil rights movement
Speaker 1: as well. And fortunately, these really big civil rights philosophies
Speaker 1: of the era happened to be embodied in one man,
Speaker 1: and that is Stokely Carmichael. And if you know about
Speaker 1: Stokely you probably either think of him as you know,
Speaker 1: this fresh faced, non violent howard student leading sit ins
Speaker 1: and voter registration drives, or you think of him as
Speaker 1: the man who coined the term black power. So too
Speaker 1: opposite of spectrum to reconcile though it is. Stokely Carmichael
Speaker 1: has this political evolution which makes him so interesting. He
Speaker 1: goes from indifference in high school to being a non
Speaker 1: violent volunteer risking his life to desegregate the South, to
Speaker 1: being the honorary Prime Minister of the Black Panther Party,
Speaker 1: to being a self proclaimed revolutionary living out his last
Speaker 1: thirty years in Guinea advocating Pan Africanism. So this guy
Speaker 1: has just done so much and has so many radical
Speaker 1: changes in his philosophy and his life. So we're going
Speaker 1: to explain how that happened. But we're going to start
Speaker 1: at the beginning of his life, as we always do.
Speaker 1: He was born June twenty nine, ninety one in Port
Speaker 1: of Spain, Trinidad. His father was a carpenter and a
Speaker 1: taxi driver, his mother a stewardess for a steamship line,
Speaker 1: and they immigrated to the U S when he was
Speaker 1: a toddler, leaving him in Trinidad with his grandmother. He
Speaker 1: moved to the United States when he was a eleven
Speaker 1: and grew up in a Jewish Italian neighborhood in the
Speaker 1: East Bronx. And he's got kind of a rough childhood.
Speaker 1: He drinks, he gets into petty theft. He says he's
Speaker 1: the only black member of the Morris Park Dukes, which
Speaker 1: is a neighborhood gang um. But then his life changes
Speaker 1: When he gets into the Bronx High School of Science,
Speaker 1: which is a really good school, he quits his gang
Speaker 1: and uh. He explains this himself the best. He says,
Speaker 1: they were all reading the Funnies while I was trying
Speaker 1: to dig Darwin and Marks. That's a good quote. So
Speaker 1: he excels at school. He's really popular too. He dates
Speaker 1: his white classmates, and by nineteen sixty he enrolls at
Speaker 1: Howard after turning down scholarships to white universities. And during
Speaker 1: this time, students at southern colleges were starting to stage
Speaker 1: sit ins to force the desegregation of lunch counters. It
Speaker 1: first happened in nineteen sixty in Greensboro, North Carolina, and
Speaker 1: by April nineteen sixty leaders of the sit in movement
Speaker 1: organized the Student on Violent Coordinating Committee, which you probably
Speaker 1: know as SNICK, and the formerly apathetic Stokely is inspired
Speaker 1: by all of this. He tells Life Magazine later in
Speaker 1: the ninteen sixty seven, when I first heard about the
Speaker 1: Negroes sitting in at lunch counters down South, I thought
Speaker 1: they were just a bunch of publicity hounds. But one night,
Speaker 1: when I saw those young kids on TV getting back
Speaker 1: up on the lunch counter stools after being knocked off them,
Speaker 1: sugar in their eyes, catch up in their hair. Well,
Speaker 1: something happened to me. Suddenly I was burning. So this
Speaker 1: sums up his his first major philosophical change in life.
Speaker 1: And he joins the non violent action group and Congress
Speaker 1: of Racial Equality known as CORE his freshman year, and CORE,
Speaker 1: of course organizes the Freedom Writers who travel the South
Speaker 1: desegregating buses. So they'd send a group of white volunteers
Speaker 1: and black volunteers and they would subvert the understood segregated
Speaker 1: order of the buses, so the the white volunteers would
Speaker 1: go to the back and the black volunteers would go
Speaker 1: to the front. And um stokely participates as a freedom writer.
Speaker 1: In nineteen six one, he's actually arrested and spends forty
Speaker 1: nine days in jail at the Parchment Penitentiary in Mississippi,
Speaker 1: which is a part hard sentence too. But he went
Speaker 1: on to earn his bachelor's in philosophy with honors in
Speaker 1: sixty four and joined SNICK. And then it's Freedom Summer
Speaker 1: and SNICK is sending hundreds of black and white volunteers
Speaker 1: to the South to teach and set up clinics and
Speaker 1: register people to vote, and Stokely comes out of this
Speaker 1: as a leader. Not only is he a good speaker,
Speaker 1: he's generally a really nice guy and a natural born
Speaker 1: leader for this kind of thing. He becomes snakes Field
Speaker 1: organizer in Lowndes County, Alabama, where he raises the registered
Speaker 1: voters to two thousand, six hundred from seventy, which way
Speaker 1: outnumbers the white registrants. And when listing political parties don't
Speaker 1: really react with the response he was expecting. You know,
Speaker 1: take take note that now this county has an overwhelming
Speaker 1: majority of black voters, and take interest in their issue
Speaker 1: and take interest. Yeah, he goes ahead and supports the
Speaker 1: all black Lownes County Freedom Organization. And interestingly, there's a
Speaker 1: law that requires the political parties to have a logo,
Speaker 1: and so this group takes on the Black Panther as
Speaker 1: their symbol, and later the Black Panther Party, which we'll
Speaker 1: talk about eventually, UM acquires this symbol as a tribute
Speaker 1: to the Lounge County Freedom Organization. But up until now, Stokely,
Speaker 1: Carmichael and Snakes support non violence, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: the civil rights philosophy best embodied by Dr King, but
Speaker 1: Stokely is radicalized by his experiences in the South. He's
Speaker 1: seen beatings and murders. He's arrested so often he loses
Speaker 1: count at thirty two, and he's impatient with how slowly
Speaker 1: this move it seems to work. He's frustrated with the
Speaker 1: civil rights movement because it's not tough enough, and he
Speaker 1: wants it to be more militant. Yeah, he's feeling increasingly militant.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen sixty six he replaces the integrationist John
Speaker 1: Lewis as Snake chairman. Is actually our congressman, Katie him
Speaker 1: and then him. I discussed the braves with him when
Speaker 1: I was about seven or eight years old. Um, So,
Speaker 1: replacing Louis, that's a big change for Snick. And about
Speaker 1: a month after his selection as the new Snack chairman,
Speaker 1: he raises the call for black power, which is a
Speaker 1: term that he coins in a speech to a crowd
Speaker 1: of about three thousand people in Mississippi. And this is
Speaker 1: right after James Meredith has been shot and wounded on
Speaker 1: his UM Walk Against Fear from Memphis to Mississippi. And
Speaker 1: you know, Meredith is shot and then um people come
Speaker 1: together to walk in his place. So Stokely is been
Speaker 1: arrested and released and he makes the speech, and in
Speaker 1: it he says, we've been saying freedom for six years.
Speaker 1: What we're going to start saying now is black power.
Speaker 1: So you can imagine this has a tremendous effect on
Speaker 1: the crowd and quickly reverberates throughout the nation. And he's
Speaker 1: still young. Then he's twenty five, and there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people, especially younger Black people, who are glad
Speaker 1: to hear this. It's coming only a year and a
Speaker 1: half after Malcolm X's assassination and things are still violent,
Speaker 1: and black power, as he conceived it was about self defense,
Speaker 1: self determination, political and economic power, and racial pride. But
Speaker 1: of course black power is really scary to um, not
Speaker 1: only a lot of white people, but a lot of
Speaker 1: traditional black civil rights leader. So there's an immediate white backlash.
Speaker 1: The contributions from white people to civil rights groups fall um.
Speaker 1: When the November elections come around, the results reflect this,
Speaker 1: and there's a black backlash to Martin. Luther King says
Speaker 1: it was an unfortunate choice of words, and the nub
Speaker 1: A c P says it's the raging of race against race.
Speaker 1: So these are sort of your traditional civil rights stalwarts
Speaker 1: coming out against this idea. And he tries to explain
Speaker 1: it in a book he wrote in ninety seven with
Speaker 1: Charles Hamilton's later and makes it sound very reasonable. He says,
Speaker 1: it is a call for black people in this country
Speaker 1: to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense
Speaker 1: of community. It is a call for black people to
Speaker 1: define their own goals, to lead their own organizations. So
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound particularly militant or or frightening. It does
Speaker 1: sound very reasonable, and it kind of reminds us again
Speaker 1: of Marcus Garvey and his idea of pan Africanism. But yeah,
Speaker 1: he starts to he starts to say more provocative stuff
Speaker 1: is the sixties go on. He travels abroad on what
Speaker 1: seems like the like worst choices. Um. He goes to
Speaker 1: North Vietnam, China and Cuba. UM. And this is in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight when he's in Havana. He says, we
Speaker 1: are preparing groups of urban guerrillas for our defense in
Speaker 1: the cities. It is going to be a fight to
Speaker 1: the death, um, which is a little alienating. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's a frightening thing for a lot of people to hear. Consequently,
Speaker 1: his passport is confiscated when he comes back from this
Speaker 1: speaking tour and it's held for ten months. While all
Speaker 1: of this is going on, things are changing with SNICK too,
Speaker 1: and the really radical members are starting to gravitate toward
Speaker 1: groups like the Black Panthers. H Rap Brown became the
Speaker 1: SNICK chairman in nineteen sixty seven, replacing Stokely, and a
Speaker 1: year later he's gone over to the Panthers. In a
Speaker 1: side note, he is now serving a life sentence for
Speaker 1: murdering a police officer in two thousands, and by nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine, SNICK has had to change its name UM
Speaker 1: because it's increasingly ironic that it's the non violent association.
Speaker 1: They change to the Student National Coordinating Committee UM. But
Speaker 1: back to the Black Panthers. They had been founded in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six in Oakland, California, by Huey Newton and
Speaker 1: Bobby Seal, and originally their goal was to protect black
Speaker 1: neighborhoods against police brutality. But by the late sixties there
Speaker 1: a Marxist organization and a popular alternative to non violence,
Speaker 1: to the non violent civil rights movement. But you were saying,
Speaker 1: the crazy thing about that is Marxism doesn't really go
Speaker 1: with this whole idea of racial Yeah, they're they're Marxist,
Speaker 1: and they like the Marxist idea of armed revolution. But
Speaker 1: in Marxism, racism is counter revolutionary, or at best, it's
Speaker 1: beside the point. It's it's about economics. But the Black
Speaker 1: Panthers are obviously focused on racial issues as well. Um,
Speaker 1: they're attractive to a lot of urban African American youths,
Speaker 1: especially people based in cities and to the late six
Speaker 1: these in early seventies, they have very violent run ins
Speaker 1: with the police. They're tremendously out armed, despite what you
Speaker 1: may have heard or what their public image is. You know.
Speaker 1: One of the sort of interesting things about researching this
Speaker 1: episode for me as I got to talk to my
Speaker 1: dad and my grandfather about this, and my my grandpa
Speaker 1: actually told me about a raid on the DC Panthers
Speaker 1: headquarters where the police confiscated guns that he described as
Speaker 1: being more dangerous for the person firing them. So they're
Speaker 1: they're tremendously out armed, their public image is vastly different
Speaker 1: from um, what they really are, and the police response
Speaker 1: to the Panthers is sometimes so violent that there's eventually
Speaker 1: a congressional investigation of police activities. Some people describe this
Speaker 1: as borderline murder. So, but the Black Panthers take on
Speaker 1: Stokely as their honorary Prime Minister, and uh that's okay
Speaker 1: for a while. But then even the Black Panthers aren't
Speaker 1: radical enough for Stokely all that with them because they
Speaker 1: want white support. He doesn't. Uh, so he moves to Africa.
Speaker 1: He leaves the US in nineteen sixty nine and moves
Speaker 1: with his first wife, Miriam Mkapa, who is a Grammy
Speaker 1: winning South African singer, to Guinea to live by the seaside.
Speaker 1: He later marries a Guinea doctor, Mary La Too Barry,
Speaker 1: and he changes his name to Kuami Torre for some
Speaker 1: earlier proponents of Pana Africanism and socialists who I believe um.
Speaker 1: He likes to wear a green uniform sometimes and a
Speaker 1: pistol at his hip also reminded me of this um
Speaker 1: sort of faux military Garvy Garvey with his with his
Speaker 1: plumes and all that um. And he helps establish the
Speaker 1: All African People's Revolutionary Party and they're really into Pan Africanism.
Speaker 1: He promotes it all around the world and on college
Speaker 1: campuses and says black power can only be realized when
Speaker 1: there exists a unified socialist Africa. So Stukeley spends about
Speaker 1: thirty years living in Guinea Um and he dies at
Speaker 1: fifty seven of prostate cancer. And he actually one said
Speaker 1: of his cancer, but it was given to me by
Speaker 1: forces of American imperialism and others who conspired with them. Um.
Speaker 1: But for this guy, who has changed his philosophy so
Speaker 1: many times and been at the center of so many
Speaker 1: of the different facets of the civil rights movement and
Speaker 1: black nationalism, he kind of loses his relevancy at the
Speaker 1: end of his life. He completely did, and perhaps being
Speaker 1: part of that non violent movement and just becoming so
Speaker 1: disillusioned by the violence it inspired and other people, he
Speaker 1: lost his place. Well. And I think that's interesting too,
Speaker 1: how the major participants in the non violent civil rights
Speaker 1: movement were affected differently by it. And you have someone
Speaker 1: like this, like you said, the non violence driving someone
Speaker 1: to violence and militancy, and then you have somebody like
Speaker 1: John Lewis, you know, who sticks to that non violet creed.
Speaker 1: We also talked a lot when we were researching this
Speaker 1: about the different snack chairman and how interesting that was
Speaker 1: to us. How different they all were, like John Lewis,
Speaker 1: who he mentioned, but also you've got Marian Barry, he's
Speaker 1: the first Snake chairman, and he got in trouble as
Speaker 1: decent in trouble some very unsavoring activities, and someone like
Speaker 1: you know, Stokely moving to Guinea and embracing Pan Africanism.
Speaker 1: And then somebody like HTE Brown who is in prison,
Speaker 1: is in prison. So it's I think it's so interesting
Speaker 1: that um one organization there can produce such different people
Speaker 1: from its leaders. So I think that wraps up Stokely Carmichael.
Speaker 1: But if you would like to learn more about the
Speaker 1: evolution of the civil rights movement, come and search for
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