"I maintain that every civil rights bill in this country was passed for white people, not for black people. "

Anyone I can relate to the "Black Power" movement is going to get blogged about, especially when I can link them to the Black Panthers.

Stokely Carmichael first came to pominance when he became the president of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Most famously they are known for voter registration and being harassed in the South when they moved their voter champaign down there. I'm not saying it worked, since all the people of power were white the registrations were often considered invalid. This was the group however who famously brought attention to Mississippi that summer after three SNCC workers (two white and one black) went missing. Good ole J Edgar Hoover had to send his FBI to investigate and found their bodies...and other black people who had disappeared that summer in the Mississippi Delta area, but naturally did not garner attention because they were black and it was the South.

Well, he only stuck around for about a year because he went heavy on the Black Power kick. He quit SNCC and joined up with my favorite group the Black Panther Party. The Panthers were more proactive than SNCC, more in your face, much more fun to read about. However, eventually, the same issue popped up as it had in SNCC before, Carmichael believed that white people should organize in their communities first before helping black lead activists, whereas the Panthers were willing to take help from anywhere at time.

Thus started Stokely Carmichael in Africa. He and his wife, a South African singer, moved to Guinea and he became an aid to the then Prime Minister Ahmed Sekou Toure.
Carmichael's progress from Black Power to the Pan-African struggle is simply taking his civil rights beliefs up a notch. His separatist views were exactly what the African people needed at that time. Their countries, for upwards of hundreds of years, were being run by either white people or the people whom the white man put in charge. Obviously, the powers that be were not going to allow Africans to have their own government and run it themselves so a clean break from everything white was probably the best idea out there. Some might see this as shortsighted and racists in it's own right but you really have to look at the times to understand how this made sense. One hundred years after the abolition of slavery black people were still considered second class. Forget the lunch counter indignities, or that in the South they would call you boy, this goes so much deeper. You couldn't vote and participate in this democracy but you could still fight its wars for it, three generations of African-Americans (and much more than that for Africans) fought in wars hoping that when they came home they would finally be viewed as equals, but instead wearing the uniform in New York City, a northern "progressive" city could get you lynched to a lamp post. I too would want to separate fully away from the society and people that were doing this to me!

Oh man, Stokely was at it til the end, blaming his cancer on the FBI and CIA. This might seem ridiculous, but if you see what those two government organization did over the years to black activists and anyone who they didn't like (say Fidel Castro), it isn't too far fetched. for years after the Black Panther Party went defunct Huey P. Newton (not the real Huey in the video), co-founder, had his house bugged and was followed by plain clothed cops, among other harder to prove accusations like staged gunfights to try and draw him out and robberies. Most Panthers ended up dead or in jail, some at the hands of police...sometimes still sleeping in their beds. Cancer as a conspiracy, perhaps not, but what else was the government doing to the man who attempted to empower black people and help Africa rise up?

And finally, think of the Carmichael quote that is my title. Think about the laws and who passed them, and when they were passed. These civil rights laws are something our classrooms hold up in teaching that we are a progressive society who does the right thing. Makes you feel warm and fuzzy that we have a law to show we no longer discriminate doesn't it? Taints that feeling when you realize that a law had to be put in place to make everyone equal doesn't it?