Stokely Carmichael
Stokely Carmichael
Stokely Carmichael, also known as Kwame Ture, was a Trinidadian-American revolutionary active in the Civil Rights Movement, and later, the global Pan-African movement. Growing up in the United States from the age of 11, he graduated from Howard University. He rose to prominence in the civil rights and Black Power movements, first as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, later as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party, and finally as a leader of the All-African...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActivist
Date of Birth29 June 1941
CountryUnited States of America
Black Power can be clearly defined for those who do not attach the fears of white America to their questions about it.
I also know that while I am black I am a human being, and therefore I have the right to go into any public place. White people didn't know that.Every time I tried to go into a place they stopped me
I ain't going to jail no more. The only way we gonna stop them white men from whuppin' us is to take over. What we gonna start sayin' now is Black Power!
The time for running has come to an end. You tell them white folk in Mississippi that all the scared niggers are dead!
Now, then, in order to understand white supremacy we must dismiss the fallacious notion that white people can give anybody their freedom.
If a white man wants to lynch me, that’s his problem. If he’s got the power to lynch me, that’s my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it’s a question of power.
We wanted to say that this is a student conference, as it should be, held on a campus, and that we're not ever to be caught up in the intellectual masturbation of the question of Black Power.
Now we maintain that we cannot be afford to be concerned about 6 percent of the children in this country, black children, who you allow to come into white schools. We have 94 percent who still live in shacks. We are going to be concerned about those 94 percent.
The knowledge I have now is not the knowledge I had then.
Our grandfathers had to run, run, run. My generation's out of breath.We ain't running no more.
In a sense, I blame ourselves - together with the mass media - for what has happened in Watts, Harlem, Chicago, Cleveland, Omaha.
Integration is a man's ability to want to move in there by himself. If someone wants to live in a white neighborhood and he is black, that is his choice. It should be his rights. It is not because white people will not allow him.
Leaders in Africa are so corrupt that we are certain if we put dogs in uniforms and put guns on their shoulders, we'd be hard put to distinguish them.
I usually say I did the best I could with what I had. I have no major regrets.