Stokely (Joseph)

Book Reviews
[A]n insightful, highly engaging and fluently written biography…[Carmichael's] life, as this biography so adroitly establishes, is central to understanding the primary lesson of the 1960s for black America. It was the point at which the country came to a moral fork in the road and opted to go straight.
William Jelani Cobb - New York Times Book Review


Joseph’s account of Carmichael’s life is well-written and well-researched, providing persuasive explanations for his appeal. Carmichael was handsome, articulate, brilliant at times, young, reckless yet disciplined. Joseph also adeptly chronicles his subject’s transformation into a revolutionary, driven by U.S. government harassment and the trauma of seeing several friends die at the hands of hard-core segregationists. But he was, too, a product of the 1960s zeitgeist of liberation begetting liberation, the youthfully immature combination of cynicism and utopianism that characterized the radical politics of the time.... Joseph’s biography fills a huge void and is a welcome addition to the scholarly literature on the civil rights movement.
Gerald Early - Washington Post


This is at its heart a book of ideas—ideas about power, freedom, and identity—and of a life, the author writes, that "took shape against the backdrop of a domestic war for America’s very soul."
Boston Globe


Peniel Joseph's vivid portrait of the charismatic man who coined the term "Black Power" is not only a masterful biography of one of the leading black radical heirs to Malcolm X, it is also a compelling 'biography' of the final phase of the Civil Rights Movement and the birth and demise of the Black Power Era. Joseph brings to his subject his characteristically careful research and a wonderful capacity to weave a gripping tale. His biography will restore Stokely Carmichael to his rightful place as a major leader of two movements in the history of the African American's struggle for equal rights.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.


This stunningly thorough appraisal of this radical activist, 50 years after the "heroic period" of the civil rights movement, is both timely and relevant.... Joseph presents an analysis of Carmichael's lifelong international political career.... should surely be considered required material for a fuller understanding of a critical, and ongoing, American struggle.
Publishers Weekly


A…nuanced portrait of this activist, who started as a community organizer fighting for and with the underclass and who jolted the racist core of the American consciousness.
Booklist


Joseph introduces a Stokely Carmichael (1941–1998) few white people ever knew in the 1960s, a man who dared to speak truth to power.... This is a man who stood out in the civil rights movement, the man who defined Black Power and who... frightened the powers that be. Joseph showcases the brilliance of the man, his exceptional ideals and his pursuit of an equality that was years ahead of his time.
Kirkus Reviews