ISU Bengal

Issue date: 3/2/05 Section: Life

Media Credit: KRT Stokely Carmichael AKA Kwame Ture gives a speech in the late nineties at an N.A.A.C.P conference.

The ISU Chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. did an excellent job this month of starting a dialogue, and any university student truly concerned about the health of their society and actively engaged in finding solutions should always be acknowledged and appreciated. They've started the dialogue, but how will we keep it going?

"Racism is both overt and covert. It takes two, closely related forms; individual whites acting against individual blacks and acts by the total of white community against the black community. We call this individual racism and institutional racism," said Stokely Carmichael, political activist and one of the founders of the ideology that is BLACK POWER. Stokely Carmichael also known as Kwame Ture was the topic of the third and final panel discussion held by the ISU Chapter of the N.A.A.C.P., Wednesday February 23. 

This session was moderated by Ram Eddings. The power of those two words, Black Power was almost too much for the American mainstream society to handle in the 1960's. It was one thing to march nonviolently for equal access, that America could deal with, but the idea that blacks do for themselves, and defend themselves by fighting back when they were being attacked was just too much. The Black Nationalist, the Black Panthers, and Stokely Carmichael together were preaching a revolution that had nothing to do with integration. To understand how the idea of Black Power came about, one must have a better understanding of the man who would be remembered as being one of the first men to use the phrase "Black Power" during the James Meredith Freedom March.

In 1952, at the age of eleven, Stokely Carmichael and his family came to America from Trinidad, a British colony.  They came like so many before, in search of a better life. The family settled for Harlem. Carmichael became a U.S. citizen and was encouraged by his parents to excel in school.

Carmichael entered one of New York City's most elite public high schools: The Bronx High School of Science. His diligent studies paid off, and when he graduated High School he was offered various scholarships to several white universities.  Carmichael at that point had already formed some strong political beliefs about Black Nationalism and turned down the scholarships. He instead went to Howard University and graduated with a degree in Philosophy in 1964.

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