Where Black Power Meets Progressive Politics

Friday, June 27th, marks the 67th birthday of Kwame Ture (formerly known as Stokely Carmichael), who joined our ancestors on November 15th, 1998 following complications related to prostate cancer. Ture was an organizer, an activist, a leader, and a Pan Africanist in the truest sense of the words. At a time when our people were forging a path between civil rights and Black Power, Ture stepped into a spotlight that could just as easily be described as cross hairs. However, despite his participation in the Mississippi Freedom Rides, leadership position in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), connections with the Black Panthers, and advocacy for the creation of African Liberation Day, for far too many brothers and sisters he remains a footnote to an era. In a political season where an “African in America” stands poised to become president, Ture’s work with Charles Hamilton, Black Power The Politics of Liberation in America, serves as a tool of analysis not only for where we have been politically, but where we must ultimately go.

-Kwame Ture

“The goal of black self-determination and black self-identity-Black Power-is full participation in the decision-making processes affecting the lives of black people, and recognition of the virtues in themselves as black people.”

– Kwame Ture and Charles Hamilton from Black Power

Perhaps it is unfair to hold Obama to the standard set by giants like Ture, King, and Malcolm X. He is, after all, a politician; and politics is nothing if not “majority rule”. However, if Obama does win the presidency, consider how little representation of people who at least look like us would be in the senate, congress, mayor’s offices, etc. This absence of representation of the people, our people, means that Black Power still has a ways to go and that we cannot, at least at this point, depend on our politicians to lead the way.

What Ture understood, which many of us still do not, is that the power of our people comes from our collective action. Our participation in politics, when it is aligned with our cultural thrust, ensures that our agenda supports the community. Perhaps this year more than ever, while we witness what is already a historical political run by Mr. Obama, the time has come to give Kwame Ture the respect he deserves. As Ture said in his last address before his passing, “We know that one of the greatest crimes an individual can commit is that of being ungrateful.” Let us make a commitment that on this June 27th, we honor the memory and mission of Kwame Ture.

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, Charles J. Evans, is an African in America who believes that the road to our future has already been laid before us by our Ancestors; we just have to follow it. Click here to reach Mr. Evans.

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