http://finalcall.com/national/cover11-24-1998.html

The Final Call   11-24-1998

Kwame Ture: Life of a legend

by James Muhammad Editor

Kwame Ture once told a news reporter that when he dies, he would die a revolutionary.

One of Black America's premiere revolutionaries passed November 15, 1998 in Conakry, Guinea, the West African nation of his mentor, the late Guinean President Ahmed Sekou Toure.

Related Sites & Stories

Kwame Ture: <http://www.finalcall.com/perspectives/kwame11-24-98.html> A Declaration to Africa and the World Min. Farrakhan <http://www.finalcall.com/columns/mlfspks-kwame.html> My promise to Kwame Ture Kwame Ture <http://www.finalcall.com/national/cover7-7-98.html> Calls for Black United Front! Reflections <http://cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/time/1998/11/23/eulogy.html> Washington, D.C. Mayor, Marion Barry, Jr. Kwame Ture Website <http://www.interchange.org/KwameTure/> My Friend Kwame Ture by Ibrahim Ebeid Guinea Page

Bro. Kwame, 57, died of prostate cancer, which he maintained until his death was "given to me by forces of American imperialism and others who conspired with them." He had received treatment for the cancer over the last several years in Cuba and in New York before returning to Guinea, where he had spent nearly 30 years of his life. Known as Stokely Carmichael during his early years as a firebrand activist in the Civil Rights Movement, Bro. Kwame was born in Trinidad on June 29, 1941. He changed his name in 1978 in honor of President Toure and the late Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah, both of whom befriended the young Carmichael when he moved to Guinea after becoming disenchanted with civil rights organizations and the more militant Black Panther Party. From Guinea, he proclaimed himself a Pan Africanist with a goal of forming "one cohesive force to wage an unrelenting armed struggle against the white Western empire for the liberation of our people."

Bro. Kwame was inspired to participate in civil rights sit-ins and student demonstrations after watching southern cops brutalize dedicated non-violent youth who attempted to eat at "white-only" restaurants or use other public accommodations reserved for whites.

It was during that time that he enrolled at Howard University, the historically-Black college in Washington, D.C., and shortly thereafter became active in the Freedom Rides-bus trips to the South to join non-violent protesters at lunch counters and in the streets. He was jailed numerous times during his years of activism in the South.

"As one of the more militant of spokespersons of that period, he held strong views in terms of civil rights and civil liberties, both here and in Africa," said Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), the former chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) who met Bro. Kwame in 1961 during the Freedom Rides.

After graduating from Howard University with a degree in philosophy in 1964, Bro. Kwame joined the SNCC and began registering Black voters at a time when Black people were being killed by racist whites for such activity. Articulate and handsome, Bro. Kwame organized the all-Black Loundes County Freedom Organization in Alabama, which took the emblem of a Black panther to fulfill a state requirement that all political parties have a logo. That logo later was adopted by the Black Panther Party, a Black empowerment group formed by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seal.

CALL FOR BLACK POWER

Three weeks before his 25th birthday, in June of 1966, Bro. Kwame was elected national chairman of the SNCC, replacing Mr. Lewis, and shortly thereafter raised the cry for "Black Power," a slogan quickly picked up by the media to describe the growing militancy of some movements and a slogan that struck fear in many whites.

In his 1967 book "Black Power," Bro. Kwame and co-author Charles Hamilton, now a professor of political science at Columbia University, tried to explain the term as "a call for Black people in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community. It is a call for Black people to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations."

But the slogan also drove a wedge between him and other more moderate leaders, and led Bro. Kwame to the Black Panther Party, of which he became honorary prime minister. But he soon became disenchanted with the party because it favored working with radical whites.

In 1968, Bro. Kwame married South African singer Mariam Makeba. In 1969, the couple moved to Guinea, with Bro. Kwame declaring, "America does not belong to Blacks." It was a transitional period for Bro. Kwame to raise the struggle to an international level and the wellspring from which emerged the All-African Peoples Revolutionary Party (A-APRP).

The first study cells of the A-APRP were created by Kwame Nkrumah, but Kwame Ture undertook the assignment to revisit North America to build the organization under Mr. Nkrumah's organizational banner. Today the A-APRP works on four continents.

He would carry the A-APRP's message of Pan-Africanism throughout the world, maintaining that continued progress for Black America could be made only through mass political organizing on a Pan-African scale. His call was for a unified Africa under scientific socialism.

After a divorce, he married Marlyatou Barry, a Guinean doctor who now lives in Arlington, Va. His mother, Mabel, three sisters and two sons survive him.

WANTED A BLACK UNITED FRONT

In one of his last great efforts to forge an "African United Front ," he lobbied in a day long sit in at the headquarters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, for the NAACP to unite with groups like the A-APRP and the Nation of Islam earlier this year. This protest was in keeping with his pledge made during the testimonial dinner in his honor held on April 8, 1998, in Washington, D.C. that included many diverse leaders of the Black liberation movement including Min. Farrakhan.

At his final appearance at the Nation of Islam's annual convention in 1998, in an exclusive interview with The Final Call, Bro. Kwame explained from his wheelchair that, "aside from the fact that Saviours' Day is now institutionalized ... Min. Farrakhan has also given it an international perspective."

At Saviours' Day 1997, Bro. Kwame, dressed in a flowing white grand boobah, delivered "revolutionary greetings" to the delegates. He thanked, on behalf of himself and the A-APRP, Minister Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam for bestowing on him an award for his years of humanitarian aid and struggle.

Concerning the man who built the Nation of Islam, Bro. Kwame said, "The Honorable Elijah Muhammad had a great effect on me. I will always defend the Honorable Elijah Muhammad because the truth can smash a million lies."

Min. Farrakhan, in a statement on Bro. Kwame, said his friend set an example of how to struggle against oppression and life's difficulties.

"The Black people of America and the progressive people of the world who struggle for freedom, justice and equality have lost a great soldier and a great friend," Min. Farrakhan said. "I made a promise to Kwame that I would work to implement a united front ... that I would strive for unity with all Black leaders and organizations for the sake of the liberation and future of our people."

"Brother Kwame was a strong supporter of independent politics," said Ron Daniels, a political activist and director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. "He epitomized the phrase 'undying love' for African people."

Mr. Daniels said Bro. Kwame was a "committed figure to a series of movements-civil rights, nationalist and Pan Africanist." While the movements go up and down, Bro. Kwame was consistent, he said.

Conrad Worrill knew Kwame Ture for 32 years and admitted it was hard to face the death of a friend and comrade. But, said the national chairman of the National Black United Front, knowing of Bro. Kwame's illness helped friends prepare for his passing.

"He'd want us to continue the struggle. So we see his passing, or his transition, as inspiration for us to continue the work that he and many others in the Pan Africanist movement throughout history have been struggling for," he said. The goal is a unified, free African continent as a force for Black liberation worldwide, said Dr. Worrill.

Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, the special envoy to Africa for the U.S. Government, said he visited Bro. Kwame three times during a recent visit to the continent. "Though cancer had weakened his body, it had not weakened his resolve for dignity," he said.

COINTELPRO TARGETS KWAME

Dr. William Hall and a young Stokely Carmicheal were activist students at Howard University in the 1960s. Last April, Dr. Hall co-chaired a testimonial dinner for his longtime friend that brought out 1,000 people, including Min. Farrakhan, Rep. Lewis, Mayor Marion Barry and ambassadors from several African countries. The event was a response to calls from people who wanted to see Bro. Kwame, knowing of his serious illness and plans to go back to Africa.

"These were friends, people who knew him over a 37-year period who wanted to again see him, and knew, to some extent, that there might not be another opportunity to see him," said Dr. Hall.

"He was so personable, if he ever met you, he would recall having met you. He could recall names and I think if anything we all like to be remembered and we like to be called by our names," Dr. Hall continued.

"Cointelpro saw (Kwame) as a serious threat and sought to ... smear his reputation by implying he was in bed with them," said Michael Eric Dyson, visiting professor of African American Studies at Columbia University in New York, regarding the government's effort to discredit the Black revolutionary.

"The fact that Stokely had to make that move of repatriation back to Africa was not only about his own evolving sense of connection to the Motherland. It was also about the vicious forces of white domination and supremacy right here in America that have little tolerance for articulate, independent, prophetic Black figures and he fit all of those," said Mr. Dyson.

An FBI Cointelpro memo once told of a plan to "bad-jacket" Bro. Kwame by spreading the word that he is a CIA informant. "It is suggested that consideration be given to convey the impression that CARMICHAEL is a CIA informant. One method of accomplishing the above would be to have a carbon copy of informant report reportedly written by CARMICHAEL to the CIA carefully deposited in the automobile of a close Black Nationalist friend," the document said.

"His work was an attempt to make us all Pan Africanist, as we should be," said Imari Obadele, minister of foreign affairs for the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Africa and an associate professor of political science at Prairie View A & M University. "There shouldn't be anybody who talks about Pan Africanism as if it's some special category set aside that's set apart for a few people."

Pan Africanism needs to be promoted because so many Blacks in America are working against Africa's interest and by extension their own interest, he said.

(Donald Muhammad and Richard Muhammad contributed to this report.)

Photos: #1-Kwame Ture, #2-Martin L. King, Jr. and Kwame Ture, #3-Kwame Ture (l), Minister Farrakkhan (r), #4-Kwame Ture at '60s rally.

Continuing coverage of memorial observances will be in the next issue.

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http://www.founders.howard.edu/moorland-spingarn/civilm-r.html

Howard University, Washington

THE MOORLAND-SPINGARN RESEARCH CENTER (MSRC)

Ralph J. Bunche Collection (formerly the Civil Rights Documentation Project)

The foundation of the Oral History Department is the Ralph J. Bunche. This collection contains more than 700 tapes and television transcripts documenting the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. A collection of Civil Rights Documentation Project Vertical Files is accessible in the Manuscript Department.

Voting Rights Act Oral History Project

On September 1, 1994 the MSRC launched the Voting Rights Act Oral History and Documentation Project. Supported from grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the Project will document the impact of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 through oral history interviews and the collection of personal papers and other primary source material.

The project currently focuses on the period between 1965 and 1985. Most of the officials being interviewed are Black men and women from the eight Southern states initially covered by the Act: Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia.

The Project will document the legislative history of the Act. Individuals who worked for or against passage of the bill and its extensions will be interviewed. The resulting oral history interviews will be transcribed. Copies of these interviews will be deposited at the MSRC and at 10 other academic and research institutions, including several historically Black colleges.

McGILL, Elzie (1903- ) RJB 280 One of the founders of the Lowndes County (Alabama) Co-op, Inc. Leader of the Lowndes County Freedom Movement. Describes the intimidation tactics used by whites to keep Blacks from registering to vote in Loundes County even after the passage of the Voting Rights Bill of 1965. Chronicles organizational tactics which Blacks used to get assistance from the Justice Department. Discusses role of federal registrars and interracial Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) workers. Praises SNCC's involvement in the county, especially its efforts to help start a Black farmers' coop (the Southwest Alabama Farmers Cooperative Association) and its role in politically organizing Blacks. Reflects on the impact of the civil rights movement on race relations in the state; draws parallels between the Black civil rights and biblical struggles of oppressed peoples. Interviewer: Robert Wright Date: August 4, 1968 Format: Transcript, 46 pages; tape not available Restrictions: Standard

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http://www.alabamatv.org/alex/studyguides/lowndes.htm

Lowndes County Freedom Organization

An episode in The Alabama Experience <../default.htm> documentary series

STUDY GUIDE

This program was produced by Dwight Cammeron (dcammeron@cpt.ua.edu ).

Suggested grade levels: 9-12

Program length: 25 minutes.

This program may also be shown in two shorter segments. Stop the tape at 13:22 into the program when you hear "something we had never had before of our own."

Introduction

They called it "Bloody Lowndes," the rusty buckle of Alabama's black belt. In 1965, A full century after the War Between the States, things hadn't changed much: 86 white families owned 90 percent of the land in the county and controlled the government. Not a single black was registered to vote.

The success of the Selma March, though, encouraged civil rights leader to believe they could fight racism even in Bloody Lowndes. "The Lowndes County Freedom Organization" revisits this place where a new political party helped blacks stand up to murder and intimidation.

A young, dynamic leader named Stokely Carmichael and the organization he represented, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), launched an intensive effort to register blacks to vote in Lowndes County.

SNCC's plan was simple: get enough people to vote so blacks might control the local government. Carmichael and others organized registration drives, demonstrations and classes. They formed a political party and entered candidates in the races.

But it wasn't enough. The black candidates were defeated. The documentary shows that the people who struggled for their rights say there was a victory in 1966: that's the year poor and disenfranchised black Alabamians found the courage to create the Lowndes County Freedom Party.

Questions After Viewing

1. Why had blacks not registered to vote in Lowndes County before 1966? (They had been required to pass a literacy test.)

2. Why did the Lowndes County Freedom Organization have to erect a tent city? (Because some white landowners evicted their black tenants when they registered to vote.)

3. Why did the people in Lowndes County decide to work with the Students Non-Violent Coordinating Committee instead of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference? (They thought SNCC would be more aggressive and would be more effective, considering the opposition in the area.)

4. Why did the civil rights struggle in Lowndes County focus on voter rights instead of access to public accommodations, as it had elsewhere? (Because the Voting Rights Act of 1966 had just been passed.)

Extra Activities

1. Have your students explore the registration process in your area. How old must they be to vote? Where do they register? What forms do they have to fill out? Where do they vote? Perhaps there are older students in the school who have voted. They might tell about the procedure.

2. The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference had some fundamental differences. Have students research these two organizations, their leaders, and explain their philosophies.

3. After Lowndes County, Stokely Carmichael became a controversial figure in the Civil Rights Movement when he worked with the Black Panther party in Oakland. Have a student present a report on Stokely Carmichael.

4. Viola Liuzzo, a white woman from Detroit, was doing volunteer work for the Civil Rights movement when she was murdered in Alabama. Have a student prepare a brief biography on her life and death.

5. Have students present a report on the Civil Rights Memorial at the Southern Law Center in Montgomery. Whose idea was it? Who designed the fountain? Who are some of the people who are memorialized at this site? (Have your students look up stories about the memorial in old issues of the Montgomery Advertiser and Alabama Journal to begin their research.)

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http://www.coe.uh.edu/hypergroups/courses/hist3394/0105.html

NY Times article: At Odds in Alabama Over a Landfill on a Historic. Tue, 03 Oct 2000

At Odds in Alabama Over a Landfill on a Historic Trail

By SOMINI SENGUPTA

AYNEVILLE, Ala., Oct. 1

Other than scruffy banks of pine and

poplar, and the occasional barbecue house and gas station, the

rolling land along the highway that stretches from Selma to

Montgomery offers little more than its rich red Alabama soil and the

collective memory of its people.

For some, the bounty of this land lies in its Selma chalk soil. They

call it "mother nature's cement," a tightly packed clay said to be

ideally suited for a landfill. That is exactly what a businessman, a

friend of the Alabama governor, has proposed to build off Highway 80,

with a promise to accept no garbage from outside Alabama and to share

his proceeds with destitute Lowndes County. Local politicians,

pinning their hopes on the landfill to bring revenue and a few jobs

to a county where nearly 40 percent of the 13,000 residents live

below the poverty line, have approved his proposal.

For others here, the wealth of this land is its place in the civil

rights movement. It was here, along Highway 80, in March 1965, that a

54-mile march, from Selma to Montgomery, led to the passage of the

1965 Voting Rights Act. Along this highway, black farmers let the

marchers camp overnight on their land. Here, the day after the march,

a civil rights volunteer, a Detroit housewife named Viola Liuzzo, was

gunned down. And along this highway, black sharecroppers, evicted for

daring register to vote, built a settlement called Tent City.

Some of these spots have been marked since the National Park Service

designated this stretch of Highway 80 a national historic trail.

Since then, too, many people here have dreamed of one day seeing

hotels and restaurants dot the highway, drawing tourists and creating

jobs. To them and to many more people outside, including the Rev.

Jesse Jackson, who spoke at an anti-dump rally last month, and John

Lewis, a congressman from Georgia who marched in 1965, a dump is the

ultimate affront, a case of environmental racism.

"It's an insult," said Bob Mants, who also marched alongside Mr.

Lewis as an organizer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating

Committee and who now heads the Lowndes County Friends of the Trail.

"You can't commemorate it on the one hand and desecrate it on the

other."

And yet, this is not a duel of old-time Deep South enemies. Unlike

many things in Alabama, the fight over the landfill has divided

traditional allies and united blacks and whites on both sides. In

fact, everybody in this fight seems eager to display their own civil

rights stripes.

The landfill's most vocal champion, for instance, is John Hulett, the

county's first black sheriff, now the probate judge and the county's

de facto political boss. Mr. Hulett, 72, helped erect Tent City and

establish the country's first black political party, Lowndes County

Freedom Party. The county commission that approved the proposed

landfill in 1998, convinced that it would not affect the civil rights

trail because it would be set back from the highway by at least 500

feet, has a black majority. The lawyers representing the county in

the landfill case work for the firm of Henry Sanders, a black state

senator and a civil rights stalwart.

Meanwhile, as Mr. Hulett points out with relish, landfill opponents

include the residents of the tony, overwhelmingly white town of

Lowndesboro, who, he says, have never cared about the county's black

majority. "We didn't have any white participation in the civil rights

movement in this town," Mr. Hulett snapped, sitting in his office

here in the county seat. "Suddenly, it's the trail they're interested

in."

For his part, the Lowndesboro mayor, John H. Nichols, 66, a white

man, points to his civil rights credentials: He was a national

guardsman circling the Edmund Pettus Bridge in a helicopter, watching

as marchers were beaten. "Then I realized, we are not free," Mr.

Nichols recalled the other evening. "That trail is as much mine as it

is anybody's. I was there."

Landfills are a major source of revenue for Alabama. There are 25

dumps statewide that take household waste alone. Much of it comes

from out of state; Alabamans produce only a third of the landfills'

capacity of 31,500 tons daily. The issue of non-Alabama trash has

become a favorite target of some politicians. Earlier this year, Gov.

Donald Siegelman opposed a proposed landfill in Macon County, since

withdrawn, because it would have accepted out-of-state trash.

The governor has remained silent on the Lowndes site, to be developed

by Lanny Young, a Montgomery businessman, race-car team owner and

political consultant who is a friend and former roommate of the

governor's chief of staff, Paul Hamrick. Mr. Young's company already

collects Lowndes County trash. His political consulting firm

represents Waste Management Inc., one of the country's biggest

landfill companies.

Mr. Young acquired land and a state permit for another landfill, in

Cherokee County, and quickly sold it at what he called a handsome

profit.

The state environmental agency has approved his proposed 200-acre,

$6.8 million landfill, which would bring in a maximum of 1,500 tons

of household garbage and construction debris into a shallow valley

encircled by a ridge of pine and oak.

His development is at a standstill now. Residents have appealed to a

state agency that oversees state permits for landfills. Mr. Young has

sued officials from the town of Lowndesboro, who claim that they

should have some legal authority over the project; the landfill would

fall within the town's police jurisdiction but outside town limits.

Mr. Young recently declared personal bankruptcy, but said it will not

affect the plans for the project.

The county, he said, could gain up to $350,000 a year, a considerable

sum for Lowndes and roughly 5 percent of the landfill's expected

gross revenues. Mr. Young would also donate 30 acres for

archaeological digs and build a kiosk on the highway to display

Lowndes history.

Quemeller Lane, 54, whose family has lived in Burkville, just west of

the dump site, for over a century, had not known much about the civil

rights struggles here, or about the 1965 march, until she moved here

from Pensacola, Fla., 26 years ago. To learn it filled her with

pride.

"To have this honor, this prestige, this highway being named a

national trail, and they come along and they say, `We'll show what we

think of this,' and put a dump on it," Ms. Lane said. "I just think

it's awful."

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