Stokely Carmichael

Photograph of Stokely Carmichael in collared shirt on off-white background.

Stokely Carmichael was still a freshman at Howard University the first time he was arrested for participating in the Freedom Rides, an effort led by the Congress of Racial Equality to desegregate interstate buses. He later went on to serve as the chairman for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and originated the phrase "black power" while protesting James Meredith's attempted assassination in the March Against Fear of 1966. In 1965, Carmichael worked with residents of Lowndes County in Alabama to increase the number of black voters from 70 to 2,600. In order to distance himself from the majority-white Democratic Party, he created the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, and chose the black panther as its mascot, which later inspired the Black Panther Party, of which he was made Honorary Prime Minister in 1968. Carmichael was the subject of a smear campaign by the FBI which damaged his relationship with the BPP and the SNCC. In the second half of his life, Carmichael moved to Africa and worked with the All-African People's Revolutionary Party, where he remained until his death in 1998.