What I'm Reading...
An ancestor speaks from the past about the current world.
I read “Stokely: A Life,” by Peniel E. Joseph when it dropped in 2014, and became transfixed by the totality of Stokely Carmichael’s revolutionary life1. I watched countless videos of his speeches and discussions and thought I had seen most books written about or by him. But while buying another book, I saw an unfamiliar text and now it’s what I’m reading: “Stokely Speaks: From Black Power to Pan-Africanism,” published by Carmichael (Kwame Ture) in 1971 while he was living in Guinea.
Made up of 15 speeches between 1967 - 1970, Carmichael uses his voice as a weapon against the oppression of Black people on the planet Earth. If James Baldwin spoke in narratives that created scenes of Black beauty while enduring pain and suffering in America, Carmichael’s words intend to inflict violence2 on any ideology (or persons) that fights against the complete liberation of Black people.
The speeches/essays touch on imperialism, the hypocrisy of democracy, Palestine and Israel, the lies of the American government, capitalism, police brutality, Black Power, Pan-Africanism and more.
Instead of using my words, here are five passages (with title of speech + year) that I highlighted while reading. I hope they open up your mind to seek knowledge in these times when those in power are trying to erase and rewrite truth right before our very eyes. As Carmichael says: “The victimization of the Negro takes place in two phases: first it occurs in fact and deed; then, and this is equally sinister, in the official recording of those facts.”
At Morgan State, 1967
“If you understand anything about this country, you know that 75 percent of the budget is spent on war materials. That means that for this country to survive it must always be at war.”
The Pitfalls of Liberalism, 1969
“The liberal is so preoccupied with stopping confrontation that he usually finds himself defending and calling for law and order, the law and order of the oppressor. Confrontation would disrupt the smooth function of society and so the politics of the liberal leads him into a position where he finds himself politically aligned with the oppressor rather than with the oppressed.”
Berkeley Speech, 1966
“I maintain that every civil rights bill in this country was passed for white people, not for black people. For example, I am black. I know that. I also know that while I am black I am a human being. Therefore I have the right to go into any public place. White people didn’t know that. Every time I tried to go into a public place they stopped me. So some boys had to write a bill to tell that white man, “He’s a human being; don’t stop him.” That bull was for the white man, not for me. I knew I could vote all the time and that it wasn’t a privilege but my right. Every time I tried I was shot, killed or jailed, beaten or economically deprived. So somebody had to write a bill to tell white people, “When a black man comes to vote, don’t bother him.” That bill was for white people. I know I can live anyplace I want to live. It is white people across this country who are incapable of allowing me to live where I want. You need a civil rights bill, not me. The failure of the civil rights bill isn’t because of the Black power or because of the student nonviolent coordinating committee or because of the rebellions that are occurring in the major cities. That failure is due to the whites incapacity to deal with their own problems inside their own communities.”
A New World to Build, 1968
“In Western society the decision has been made, they want technological development before human development — isn’t' it clear? They decided to get the atomic bomb, to get an industrial society — at the expense of human development. If we are to talk about real, new types of education among black people, we must see whether or not technical development has to be at the expense of human development. And if it does, then we ought to say that we would rather have human development than technical development. But that is too profound for most of us to even understand, and it scares us, because what we try to do is keep up with the white man rather than set our own pace, and we don’t even recognize that though we say we are black. When he ends the book The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon says that friends, brothers, sisters should come together. We have a new world to build. Our object is not to catch up with Europe. Four hundred yeas ago a colony tried to catch up with Europe. She succeeded so well that today the United States of America is the monster of the world. Come, brothers and sisters, let us not try to catch up with Europe. Let us try to go forward in the company of man. All men. Fanon is telling us that we can’t waste our time trying to catch up with this man because we develop atomic bombs and have our zombies just like him. Or we may become as cold as he has become because of the desires to become technologically advanced. So before we even talk about education, we must question whether or not a university, where all the people come and are taught, is really the best way to teach. All those things have to be questioned if we are, in fact, serious about what we are doing. A university is geared for mass production, and we should decide whether or not we want to mass-produce our people…”
Free Huey, 1968
“They took us from Africa and they put thousands of miles of water between us, but they forgot — blood is thicker than water. We are coming together. We are an African people with an African ideology, and we are wandering in the United States. We are going to build a concept of peoplehood in this country or there will be no country.
Stokely Carmichael is one of the many Black activists who will never be taught in American school systems because he speaks the truth…no filter. A true educational travesty.
“Let us understand violence, because that’s very important. There is always violence. Now what happens is that the oppressor, because he has power, can institutionalize and legitimatize his violence to the point where we, the oppressed, accept it. Because the oppressed does not have the power to institutionalize his violence, his violence is always seen very quickly as illegitimate. You don’t think it is violent to kill in Vietnam because you get a medal…”