Kwame Ture: November 1974
Kwame Ture (1941-1998), formerly known as Stokely Carmichael, was a prominent Trinidadian-American Black activist who helped originate one of the most powerful slogans in the world, Black Power. Ture, writing with Charles V. Hamilton, explains black power as “a call for black people...to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community, to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations and support those organizations, and to reject the racist institutions and values of this society” (1967).
Ture joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) as a college graduate, where he became a field organizer. In May 1966, he was elected as the national chairman. In June 1966, Ture’s colleague, James Meredith, a civil rights activist, embarked on a solitary “Walk Against Fear” and was shot and wounded, after which SNCC carried on the march in his honor. Ture gave his most famous speech at the culmination of this march, stating that “We’ve been saying ‘freedom’ for six years … What we are going to start saying now is “Black Power.” This was the driving force of his split from the SNCC, and his new beginning with the Black Panther Party, where he became the Prime Minister. He spent the next two years speaking around the country and writing essays on black nationalism, black separatism and, increasingly, pan-Africanism. In 1969, Ture quit the Black Panthers and left the United States to take up residence/refuge in Conakry, Guinea, where he dedicated his life to the cause of pan-African unity and became the organizer of the All-African Revolutionary Party. Ture was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1985, and he said publicly that his cancer “was given to him by forces of American imperialism and other conspirators.”
The Black Student Union: Black Onyx and the Third World Front invited Kwame Ture to SUNY Plattsburgh in November 1974. Steve Larkin wrote a summary of his speech in Cardinal Points. Ture announces to the crowd that he is a socialist who completely denounces any acts of capitalism. He noted that a wide range of social problems such as poverty and pollution were constantly happening because of capitalism. Ture explained that capitalism is motivated by profit while socialism is motivated by the love of mankind. He described slavery as the most vicious form of capitalism and argued that its existence greatly added to the wealth reaped by North America and Europe. He focused the last parts of his speech on Pan-Africanism, stating that people should inhabit the land they originated from. Ture gave a few examples, stating that Africa belongs to Blacks, America to the indigenous peoples, and that all white inhabitants of other lands should return back to Europe.
Generally, America as a whole pushed hard to denounce him, his life’s work, and his existence. In Plattsburgh, there was barely any information about his visit. Nevertheless, he was an important figure and an honest leader who inspired Black people to put themselves first, make a change for their communities, and reject all racist institutions and values.
--Keianna Noble ‘19