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An article in Smithsonian Magazine laments the fact that anti-white, anti-Semitic, black separatist "Black Power" leader of the '60s Stokely Carmichael never made it onto the cover of TIME magazine.
Writer Wil Haygood profiles Carmichael in his piece as just another civil rights activist who brought about a "watershed moment" when he popularized the phrase "Black Power" and "was breaking with Martin Luther King Jr.’s mantra of nonviolence." Haygood quotes Carmichael, who once said:
“We were never fighting for the right to integrate, we were fighting against white supremacy. We must dismiss the fallacious notion that white people can give anybody his freedom. A man is born free.”
Haygood said Carmichael was such a "riveting young leader" that he caught the eye ofTIME as a potential cover subject. The magazine commissioned a famed African-American artist, Jacob Lawrence, to create a portrait, depicting Carmichael wearing plantation overalls alongside a panther.
"This was justice stalking America," Haygood concludes.
That portrait never made TIME's cover in 1966 and no satisfactory explanation was found by Haygood. In fact, he said an article in that issue was critical of Carmichael, calling him a "militant ideologue." But the Smithsonian has given the "powerful" portrait that "captured the turning point in the Civil Rights Movement" a prominent place in its National Portrait Gallery.
Here are a few key facts the Smithsonian ignored while praising Carmichael:
- Born in Trinidad, moved to New York at age 11
- Enrolled at Howard University and led the school's Non-Violent Action Group in 1960
- After graduating in 1964, Carmichael became chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
- Began calling for black rage by popularizing the rallying cry, "Black Power;" said calls for integration, like those of MLK, were simply "subterfuge for the maintenance of white supremacy."
- All white members and supporters of SNCC were eventually expelled and denounced
- Encouraged blacks to begin their own "national liberation," encouraged "offing pigs" and "killing honkies"
- In 1966, he said, "The Negro is going to take what he deserves from the white man."
- Teamed up with the Black Panther Party; began giving lectures at U.S. colleges and abroad calling for "urban guerrillas" to take up arms in his "fight to the death."
- By 1969, Carmichael moved to West Africa, changing his name to Kwame Ture to honor Ghana's former communist dictator Kwame Mkrumah.
- During the '70s, Ture expressed his contempt for Jews and Israel writing, "the only good Zionist is a dead Zionist."
- In the '80s, he traveled back to the U.S. and rekindled his friendship with Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.
- Before his death in 1998 due to cancer he believed was "FBI-induced," Ture denounced capitalism as "the enemy" of the black man.
- After his death, Jesse Jackson lamented the man who always answered the phone with "Ready for the revolution", saying, "he rang the freedom bell in this century."
Read more about the Smithsonian's favored civil rights activist at Discover the Networks.
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