Stokely Carmichael – Part 8: The Radicalization of the SNCC under Carmichael's leadership
Apr, 29, 2009
Posted by
Stokely Carmichael - The Key Organizer of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO) a.k.a. Lowndes County Black Panther Party
Continuation of Stokely Carmichael – Part 7: Carmichael becomes a Full-Time SNCC Activist
Through his leadership skills Stokely Carmichael rose to become the Lowndes County Black Panther Party’s key organizer. Gaining increasingly more responsibilty inside the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Carmichael developed into one of its most decisive representatives.The party’s slogan “Power for Black People” left no doubt about the goals Carmichael intended to achieve. The activist demanded the attainment of political power for black people instead of continuing the integrationist efforts in order to become part of a system he regarded racist.
Most of the SNCC members agreed with Carmichael’s position characterized by an augmented „black consciousness” and subsequently by a paradigm shift – away from integrationism and towards „black nationalism” when in 1966 he was elected president. Replacing the “nonviolent apostle” John Lewis as leader of the SNCC Stokely Carmichael contributed decisively to the radicalization of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
The majority of the organization agreed with Carmichael’s stance. Having experienced similar atrocities and hate during their organizational activities in the Deep South they indeed disapproved with nonviolent tactics without any reservation. Carmichael, for whom nonviolence had always been a strategy, not a philosophy of life, declared:
“I don’t go along with this garbage that you can’t hate, you gotta love. I don’t go along with that at all. Man you can, you do hate. You don’t forget that Mississippi experience. You don’t get arrested twenty-seven times. You don’t smile at that and say love thy white brother. You don’t forget those beatings and, man, they were rough. Those mothers were out to get revenge. You don’t forget. You don’t forget those funerals. I knew Medgar Evers, I knew Willie Moore, I knew Mickey Schwerner, I knew Jonathan Daniels, I met Mrs. Liuzzo just before she was killed. You don’t forget those funerals”.
The radicalization of the SNCC furthermore manifested itself in a rising hostility towards white people. Some black members even demanded the expulsion of all the white members from the SNCC.
Stokely Carmichael’s attitude towards white people was more diplomatic. He asked the white members and sympathisers of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to concentrate on their own white communities instead of working in the black southern ones. This is how he explained himself:
“You must seek to tear down racism. You must seek to organize poor whites. You must stop crying ‘Black supremacy’ [...] or ‘racism in reverse’ and face certain facts: that this country is racist from top to bottom and one group is exploiting the other. You must face the fact that racism in this country is a white, not a black problem. And because of this, you must move into white communities to deal with the problem“.
To be continued …
Posted in Black Activists, Stokely Carmichael by |
