Is this FERGUSON or is this Birmingham....2014 or 1964????

Kwame Toure aka Stokely Carmichael

Once upon a time in America, there lived a young Black man who embodied the best of W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington...Martin Luther King and Malcolm X...Barack Obama and Cornel West. He graduated from Bronx High School of Science in 1960 with varied academic scholarship offers from prestigious "white" universities. That notwithstanding, he chose to attend Howard University studying Sarte, Camus, and Santayana while graduating "with honors" and a degree in Philosophy.  He was a firebrand founding member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC or "snick"), and became the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.

Stokely Carmichael (aka Kwame Toure) addressed the ambiguously complex and murky spaces existing between violence and non-violence..."Black power" and Black acquiessence...mainstream acceptance and radical militancy...justice and peace.

 

He was a brilliant scholar and a charismatic grassroots activist.  Carmichael is no longer here to lend his hand in the struggle, but his wise words linger presciently in the aftermath of Michael Brown's apparent execution at the hands of a Missouri police officer, and the brutal police response to mostly Black citizens exercising their constitutional right to free speech and to peaceably assemble.

From the grave, Stokely speaks to Ferguson, Missouri:

 

"We were aware of the fact that death walks hand in hand with struggle." 

"I also know that while I am black I am a human being, and therefore I have the right to go into any public place."

 "There is a higher law than the law of government. That's the law of conscience."

 

"The secret of life is to have no fear; it's the only way to function."

 

"We had no more courage than Harriet Tubman or Marcus Garvey had in their times. We just had a more vulnerable enemy."

 

Has the rabid right-wing, militarized law-and-order philosophy ushered in by Richard Nixon and George Wallace, perfected by Ronald Reagan and Lee Atwater, and fondly embraced by Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, once again rendered the "enemy" vulnerable?  We'll see.

 

Until then, I'm with the family of Michael Brown, the city of Ferguson, and The Roots channeling our forefathers, singing "Can't Turn Me Around."

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ta6UmkqzZA0

 

 

Until we rendezvous...

 

Put Your Hands Up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!