Kwame Ture
Iconic Graduates
Pan-African Activist & Organizer
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Field of Study
B.A. in Philosophy
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Year Graduated
1964
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Affiliation
Alumni
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Hometown
Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago
Quote
The job of the conscious is to make the unconscious conscious.Biography
Kwame Ture (formerly Stokely Carmichael) was a civil rights activist, writer, and orator known as a lead figure within the Pan-African and Black nationalist movements, and for coining the slogan, “Black power.” Ture was born in Trinidad in 1941 and immigrated to New York City in 1952. In high school, watching a televised sit-in for civil rights inspired him to join the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and participate in sit-ins across the United States. During his freshman year at Howard University, where he majored in philosophy, he participated in his first Freedom Ride. The Freedom Rides were integrated bus trips through the American South in protest of the segregated public transportation system.
After graduating from Howard in 1964, Ture became a field organizer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He played a vital role in the Freedom Summer, a campaign to register black voters in the Deep South. However, he eventually became disillusioned with the slow pace of progress and continued police violence faced by activists for integration. In 1966, Ture gave the speech wherein he first spoke the words “Black Power,” calling for cultural, political, and economic self-determination for Black people around the world. He joined the Black Panther Party and journeyed around the world to visit with revolutionary leaders, eventually ending up in Conakry, Guinea, where he changed his name from Stokely Carmichael to Kwame Ture in 1969. There, he dedicated the rest of his life to Pan-African unity. In his writings and speeches, Ture helped to redefine African American identity--as well as Black identity around the globe--with his revolutionary proclamation that Black is beautiful.