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A Life
Basic Civitas Books
March 2014
On Sale: March 4, 2014
426 pages ISBN: 0465013635 EAN: 9780465013630 Kindle: B00FD36FQC Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Political
Stokely Carmichael, the charismatic and controversial black
activist, stepped onto the pages of history when he called
for “Black Power” during a speech one Mississippi night in
1966. A firebrand who straddled both the American civil
rights and Black Power movements, Carmichael would stand for
the rest of his life at the center of the storm he had
unleashed that night. In Stokely, preeminent civil rights
scholar Peniel E. Joseph presents a groundbreaking biography
of Carmichael, using his life as a prism through which to
view the transformative African American freedom struggles
of the twentieth century. During the heroic early years of the civil rights movement,
Carmichael and other civil rights activists advocated
nonviolent measures, leading sit-ins, demonstrations, and
voter registration efforts in the South that culminated with
the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Still,
Carmichael chafed at the slow progress of the civil rights
movement and responded with Black Power, a movement that
urged blacks to turn the rhetoric of freedom into a reality
through whatever means necessary. Marked by the
assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., a
wave of urban race riots, and the rise of the anti-war
movement, the late 1960s heralded a dramatic shift in the
tone of civil rights. Carmichael became the revolutionary icon for this new racial
and political landscape, helping to organize the original
Black Panther Party in Alabama and joining the iconic Black
Panther Party for Self Defense that would galvanize
frustrated African Americans and ignite a backlash among
white Americans and the mainstream media. Yet at the age of
twenty-seven, Carmichael made the abrupt decision to leave
the United States, embracing a pan-African ideology and
adopting the name of Kwame Ture, a move that baffled his
supporters and made him something of an enigma until his
death in 1998. A nuanced and authoritative portrait, Stokely captures the
life of the man whose uncompromising vision defined
political radicalism and provoked a national reckoning on
race and democracy.
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