April 11, 2014
This week, the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill was celebrated in a week-long summit at the LBJ Library in Austin, TX with President Barack Obama as one of the keynote speakers. Two years after the signing of that bill, Stokely Carmichael would raise his voice and his fist in a call to action for Black Power. Black Power was a movement, a philosophy, a strategy, and an attitude that was frightening to some, but empowering to those who had grown impatient with larger civil rights movement and its use of non-violence as the way of combatting racial injustice. Stokely: A Life is the newest biography of of the architect of the American Black Power movement, written by historian Peniel Joseph. We'll take a look at the impact of Carmichael's activism on contemporary progressive movements.
(Image: Stokely: A Life by Peniel Joseph)