Stokely Carmichael: A New Form Of Black Empowerment

Introduction
Within an increasingly tensed and angry atmosphere on June 16, 1966, Stokely Carmichael made his famous call for Black Power during the Meredith March against Fear in Greenwood, Mississippi. Frustrated by the slow pace of the implementation of the moderate racial reforms, the young activist, together with other SNCC members, requested a change in strategies. After years of violent attacks and the federal government’s continued unwillingness to protect the lives of civil rights organizers and African Americans in general, Carmichael envisioned a new form of Black empowerment; one that would be independent from the fleeting mood and empty promises of Whites. No longer should African Americans place their trust in the national Democratic
Rather than being responsive to the sensitivity of Whites, Carmichael maintained, African Americans needed to take their destinies into their own hands and form their own independent political organizations to gain control over decisions that affect their lives and their communities. The proposed strategy of Black empowerment had evolved out of the practical experiences of Carmichael and other SNCC members in Lowndes County, Alabama, where local African Americans had not only overcome their fear of the potential deadly repercussion as they dared to register to vote, but had also founded their own independent local party. Black unity, Carmichael argued, would make it possible to accomplish this new form of Black empowerment in different places
Given the fluidity of their approaches and the different contexts within which Malcolm and Stokely operated, this paper is only able to cover parts of their intellectual evolution. Therefore, it focuses only on the writings and speeches from the years 1963 to 1970. The first part of the paper establishes the historical context and provides some insight into how Malcolm and Stokely’s upbringing and their early activism shaped their intellectual and practical outlooks. The second, more extensive part of the paper, then analyzes the similarities and differences in the evolution of their thinking about strategies for Black empowerment. The focus of this section is laid on Malcolm and Stokely’s views on the need for Black unity, their ideas on Pan-Africanism, their strategies to confront internalized racism, as well as role that they assign to Black history and Black culture in achieving these goals. While this study does not claim that Malcolm and Stokely were divided by stark ideological differences, it does suggest that in approaching the objectives of Black unity and Black freedom, the routes they took at times diverged. By illustrating these deviations, this paper aims to add to our understanding of the evolution of the Black Power movement. While it