




Most people learned at least a few things about the Civil Rights movement from their progression through school. The civil rights movement was the fight for minority rights, mostly African American’s, during the fifties and sixties. This movement helped acknowledge the racism that was going on in the United States and attempt to eliminate these issues. One activist that is not usually spoken about or remembered as being an influence during the civil rights movement is Stokely Carmichael. One of Carmichael’s speeches was at UC Berkely to a group of college students speaking about the movement and the need to keep fighting for the rights of African American individuals. This speech that Carmichael gives to the students allows for a reader to better understand the time and see a glance from his point of view of the civil rights movement.  

Carmichael first got into the spotlight of political scene in 1966 after becoming the elected Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or SNCC. Although before this Carmichael was still very active in the SNCC coordinating events like marches and sit-ins (Garrow, D. J.). Carmichael attended Howard University an all-black school where he learned that there was a need to fight for the rights of African Americans in this country and that they were not being treated equally during this time. During this time at the University, Stokely Carmichael joined the Freedom Rides campaign (Garrow, D. J.). This campaign was where a group of Africans Americans would ride buses down to Alabama and Mississippi, where racism was the worst, to protest the bus laws prohibiting them from riding in the front. While doing, this Carmichael was arrested and spent forty-nine days in jail along with a group of other African Americans (Killcoyne, Hope). Stokely Carmichael started as a college student fighting for the rights of all African Americans in the United States and this speech shows the fire that pushed him through the years to keep fighting.

While Stokely Carmichael was in college the Civil Rights movement had just began, and was growing around the nation quickly. The movement began to pick up and gain traction when the Supreme court desegregated all schools on May 17, 1954 (Killcoyne, Hope). Although this was only a small portion of the problem during that time along with segregated buses, restaurants, parks, water fountains, and many more places. The decision was helpful though because it gave much of the black population hope that they could change how they are treated by the law. After this Martin Luther King became the face of the movement. Groups like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) also led many peaceful protests such as sit-ins or marches (Killcoyne, Hope).  As the head of the SNCC Carmichael would lead many of these events to help further the cause.

The speech “Black Power” that Carmichael gives to students attending the University of UC Berkely in 1966 was a true expression of what he was fighting for and why he felt so strongly for it. While Carmichael was working for the SNCC before he became the elected chairman was working with a man named Jon Daniels. Daniels was a white male but felt the need to help the movement and was volunteering his time. After Daniels had been working with Carmichael and they had known each other for a while Jon Daniels was shot dead. The man who killed him was a racist who lived in the town where Daniels had lived (Garrow, D. J.). This event hurt Carmichael deeply about the death because he felt at fault that he allowed Daniels to help in the beginning. This guilt could be one of the reasons why he felt that the fight for equal rights was his responsibility.

An event that shows one reason why Carmichael felt the need to speak up about the racial divide was on that he talked about in his speech. Stokely Carmichael tells the crowd an example of a horrible murder investigation that was going on at the time in Mississippi. The sheriff of one of the counties, his deputies and a group of white men had killed three African American people but nobody was found guilty. He says that the reason for this was that the people who got this man elected wouldn’t be able to find him guilty because they are the ones who put him in this place of power (Carmichael, Stokely). The reason for this historical example was that it relates to the whole idea that Carmichael was arguing for which was that the institutions need to change for social issues to change in the country. During this time this was definitely not the only time a black man was killed for no reason by racist white men. This story would be just another incident or statistic of the past or that time if Stokely had not brought this example up in his speech. The use of this example in this speech gives insight to the historical moment of the racial clashes that were going on.

This speech brought a large amount of awareness to the Civil Rights Movement to the Students of UC Berkely and the other colleges that he spoke to. During his time as elected chairman of the SNCC he spent much of his time traveling across the country giving speeches mostly to colleges (Garrow, D. J.). This strategy was to get the younger and more liberal adults to understand that racism needed to end in the country. It would be hard to change the mind of older adults who had already made their decision on the issue. The idea to speak to college students was that they were educated enough to understand what he was arguing and they were still building their values and morals. Their generation would eventually become the leaders of the country where they could change the change the social ideas of African Americans and equality as whole.

Stokely Carmichael also spends a large portion of his speech on the institutions that in control in the United States. He explains that they are the reason that Africans Americans are not considered to be equal and have no rights. In his speech when talking about how organizations come into black communities trying to help he talks about how they don’t understand saying, “’cause they don’t want to face the real problem which is a man is poor for one reason and one reason only: ‘cause he does not have money period” (Carmichael, Stokely). Stokely is trying to address that the problem of black poverty is not because they are in need of help it is because they are not given the opportunity to make any money. He then goes onto list the founders, CEO’s and board members of the big corporations of the time like Rockefeller, Gulf Corp, Standard Oil (Carmichael, Stokely). Stokely is arguing that because these people and their corporations as well as similar one are not hiring African Americans how came they ever further themselves if they are unable to make a living. Historically once the laws allowing corporations to discriminate based on color are taken away and replaced African Americans are finally able to gain power within the country in professional environments as well as social.

Stokely Carmichael’s Speech “Black Power” to college students at UC Berkely allows a new understanding of the Civil Rights Movement that he was a part of from his point of view. Historically the Civil Rights movement was the fight for equality and rights for African Americans. From Carmichaels speech readers are able to understand the history of the movement as well as what the movement meant to him and why he felt so strongly about it along with many others of that time. Through his past experiences Stokely was able to use his passion to fight for African American’s rights through speeches that used historical events to better explain what the Civil Rights movement meant to him.




