Stokely (Joseph)

Stokely: A Life
Peniel E. Jospeh, 2014
Basic Books
424 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780465033133


Summary
Stokely Carmichael, the charismatic and controversial black activist, stepped onto the pages of history when he called for “Black Power” during a speech one Mississippi night in 1966. A firebrand who straddled both the American civil rights and Black Power movements, Carmichael would stand for the rest of his life at the center of the storm he had unleashed that night. In Stokely, preeminent civil rights scholar Peniel E. Joseph presents a groundbreaking biography of Carmichael, using his life as a prism through which to view the transformative African American freedom struggles of the twentieth century.

During the heroic early years of the civil rights movement, Carmichael and other civil rights activists advocated nonviolent measures, leading sit-ins, demonstrations, and voter registration efforts in the South that culminated with the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Still, Carmichael chafed at the slow progress of the civil rights movement and responded with Black Power, a movement that urged blacks to turn the rhetoric of freedom into a reality through whatever means necessary. Marked by the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., a wave of urban race riots, and the rise of the anti-war movement, the late 1960s heralded a dramatic shift in the tone of civil rights.

Carmichael became the revolutionary icon for this new racial and political landscape, helping to organize the original Black Panther Party in Alabama and joining the iconic Black Panther Party for Self Defense that would galvanize frustrated African Americans and ignite a backlash among white Americans and the mainstream media. Yet at the age of twenty-seven, Carmichael made the abrupt decision to leave the United States, embracing a pan-African ideology and adopting the name of Kwame Ture, a move that baffled his supporters and made him something of an enigma until his death in 1998.

A nuanced and authoritative portrait, Stokely captures the life of the man whose uncompromising vision defined political radicalism and provoked a national reckoning on race and democracy. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1971 ?
• Where—New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., State University of New York, Stony Brook'
   Ph.D., Temple University
• Currently—lives in Sommerville, Massachusetts


Peniel E. Joseph is Professor of History at Tufts University and the author of the award-winning Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour, as well as editor of The Black Power Movement and Neighborhood Rebels. The recipient of fellowships from Harvard University's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute and its Charles Warren Center, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Ford Foundation, his essays have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Journal of American History, Chronicle Review, Bookforum, and American Historical Review. (From the publisher.)

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

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