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The SIXTIES and SEVENTIES from BERKELEY to WOODSTOCK (5 of 7)

The revolution by blacks that Stokely Carmichael wanted remained on hold. In 1966 Carmichael announced in Mississippi that the civil rights movement had produced "nothing." "What we gonna start saying now," he announced, "is Black Power!" Carmichael attracted attention across the nation with his calls for Black Power. He was elected Chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1966 by like-minded members of that organization. He had become a believer in Marxism and revolution. He was expelled from SNCC, and, while Huey Newton was in jail, Carmichael became "Prime Minister" of the Black Panthers, the Panthers happy to have a man as well known as Carmichael as one of their leaders.

Like the Bolshevik's politburo just after the Russian Revolution, Panther leaders started to annoy one another. Carmichael was upset because he wanted classes for educating fellow Panthers -- classes on Marxism-Leninism and scientific socialism. "We cannot be running just on instinct," he said. We must "have reasoning." And Carmichael was upset over the Panthers having joined forces with the Peace and Freedom Party -- a political party with about 2,000 registered voters in Berkeley and consisting largely of whites. Carmichael was opposed to working with whites. The Panther slogan remained white inclusive, "all power to the people," rather than Carmichael's slogan, "Black Power." Bobby Seale and another Panther leader, Eldridge Cleaver, described Carmichael as "bourgeois." Carmichael was to describe Cleaver and Seale as stupid [note] and he was to describe himself as less than thrilled by the Panther breakfast program for children. He accused the Panthers of acting more like a "Salvation Army" than revolutionaries.

Carmichael quit the Panthers and went to Africa where he changed his name to Kwame Ture. He befriended the exiled former head-of-state of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah (who accused Carmichael of being too talkative), and Carmichael devoted himself to a new cause: the unification of Africa.