Product Description

Head of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. Honorary prime minister of the Black Panther Party. Bestselling author. Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) is an American legend, one whose work as a civil rights leader fundamentally altered the course of history -- and our understanding of Pan-Africanism today.

Ready for Revolution recounts the extraordinary course of Carmichael's life, from his Trinidadian youth to his consciousness-raising years in Harlem to his rise as the patriarch of the Black Power movement.

In his own words, Carmichael tells the story of his fight for social justice with candor, wit, and passion -- and a cast of luminaries that includes James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Ho Chi Minh, and Fidel Castro, among others. Carmichael's personal testimony captures the pulse of the cultural upheavals that characterize the modern world. This landmark, posthumously published autobiography reintroduces us to a man whose love of freedom fueled his fight for revolution to the end.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #77718 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 848 pages

Amazon.com Review
Stokely Carmichael (known as Kwame Ture later in his life) died before his autobiography, Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael, could be completed, so much of the text was stitched together from extensive taped sessions by his long-time friend, Ekwueme Michael Thelwell. What remains is a sometimes uneven but always stirring record one of the most fascinating and controversial figures of the Twentieth Century.

Carmichael was born in Trinidad, but his life as an activist began with his immersion in the Civil Rights movement at the Bronx High School of Science and then Howard University in the 1950s and 60s. At Howard he joined the Nonviolent Action Group (NAG) and later, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), through which he drove voter registration efforts in Mississippi and Alabama. Later, as chairman of the SNCC he moved beyond the teachings of nonviolent resistance and forged the Black Power movement, authoring one of its key documents, "Toward Black Liberation" with Thelwell. He became a nationally recognized figure, reviled by leaders on both the left and the right for his apparent abandonment of integration. Yet his vision for black self-determinism would empower a generation of African-American artists, scholars, and leaders to embrace a new vision of African and African-American identity that is still transforming black culture. Eventually, Carmichael settled in Guinea, where he became a member of the ruling party and spent his later years promulgating his vision for Pan-African revolution.

In the introduction to Ready for Revolution, Thelwell admits that, in keeping the story faithful to the recordings, he left it essentially a "first draft" of Carmichael's vision. Thelwell's intrusions in the text, whether his own points or thoughts of others whom he interviewed are bracketed--while this formal approach honors Carmichael's words, the passages are often distracting and would have been better left as endnotes. Further, Thelwell seems to let Carmichael's original text stand where some pruning would have been beneficial, notably in Carmichael's overly detailed recounting of his school days. That said, Thelwell has done a great service to African-American studies by shepherding Carmichael's controversial, quirky, and uncompromising autobiography into print. --Patrick O'Kelley

From Publishers Weekly
The firebrand civil rights leader who led the call for Black Power in the 1960s looks back on nearly five decades of protests and freedom fighting in this passionate, posthumous autobiography. In collaboration with his friend Thelwell (a professor of Afro-American studies at the University of Massachusetts), Carmichael, who died in Guinea in 1998, traces his path from immigrant child of Trinidad to charismatic U.S. student activist and unrepentant revolutionary. The story is told largely in Carmichael's own stylish, often thunderous, first-person words and is named for the telephone greeting that the author used for much of his life. It covers the full sweep of events that shaped Carmichael's life: his years at the elite Bronx High School of Science and Howard University; summers spent registering black voters in Mississippi and Alabama; personal encounters with such leaders as Martin Luther King, James Baldwin and Malcolm X; and his sudden decision in 1969 to relocate to Africa and change his name to Kwame Ture. Carmichael also addresses controversial issues that surrounded him as a young civil rights activist: his splits with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panthers, and reports of ideological struggles with the pacifist King all "[u]tter, utter nonsense," he insists. While Carmichael's love for the African community and its traditions are infectiously passionate, the book's singular perspective, despite being intercut with other interviewees and sources, won't sustain every reader. The book is at its strongest when Carmichael recounts powerful I-was-there anecdotes (most notably from his days as a SNCC organizer in Mississippi) that civil rights historians will devour. At its best, this is a compelling portrait of a radical thinker who radiated charisma and practiced revolution to the end.
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From The Washington Post

No one can question that Stokely Carmichael left his mark on the black freedom struggle of the 1960s. He was a key player in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s, a group that became legendary for its courage in the face of white supremacist violence. SNCC members developed a reputation as creative organizers. Settling in Deep South communities, they made themselves instruments of disenfranchised African Americans whose wisdom they drew out and from whom they learned.

In June 1966, shortly after Carmichael became SNCC's chairman, civil rights forces faced a direct challenge. James Meredith, who earlier had integrated "Ole Miss," was gunned down as he walked a Mississippi highway in his one-man "freedom from fear" campaign. To leave this assault unanswered would have sent a message that the state's blacks could be cowed into submission. Carmichael mobilized activists to continue Meredith's march. Hundreds, including Martin Luther King Jr., trekked through the state, stopping in small hamlets where local folks rallied.

Everywhere they went, state police harassed them, prodding them with night sticks, beating them to the ground, lobbing tear gas into the crowds. As white violence escalated, the SNCC crew seized the moment to present a dramatic new message. No longer speaking the soothing words of Christian nonviolence, no longer petitioning the federal government for protection, Carmichael instead raised the cry of "black power." Nothing would ever be the same.

Black power heralded a sea change in race relations. The meanings of the phrase were as varied as the individuals who took it up; it could be bent and shaped to many ends. For some, black power signified separation and an independent nation. For others it became shorthand for building an urban political machine. Among the younger generation of blacks, it quickly removed from every sphere of life the old deferential style their elders had employed when interacting with whites.

His invocation of black power put Carmichael on the front page of America's newspapers. He became the target of sustained government surveillance. He was declared persona non grata throughout the British Commonwealth, had his passport seized by American customs officials and was indicted for causing riots when he was not even present. To mainstream media and the political establishment, Carmichael became the bad guy. And, truth be told, he seemed to revel in the role.

Over the past generation, as biographies and memoirs of the black freedom struggle have appeared, Carmichael's place in the movement has faded. We know much more about John Lewis, Fannie Lou Hamer, Andrew Young, Ella Baker and James Farmer, to name a few. Ready for Revolution aims to return Carmichael to a place among the leading figures in the fight for racial justice.

The goal will prove elusive, partly because of the book's origins and partly because of the subject himself. When he was diagnosed with cancer in the mid-1990s, Carmichael prevailed upon Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, a friend from SNCC days, to tape a series of conversations in which Carmichael recounted his life. When he died in 1998, Carmichael had edited only the first six chapters. Thelwell completed the rest.

The most informative chapters are the early ones that tell of Carmichael's boyhood in Trinidad and his family's subsequent settling in the Bronx. There, in the 1950s, he came of age in a neighborhood of working-class Italians. At the elite Bronx High School of Science, Carmichael immersed himself in left-wing student politics, absorbing a Marxism that, he says, never seemed sufficient for the African experience. He worked as a volunteer on campaigns organized by Bayard Rustin, the black socialist who served as mentor to hundreds of young activists in this period. Enrolling at Howard University in 1960, Carmichael found himself thrown into an emerging culture of pride and rebellion emanating from the spirit of the Southern struggle. From there it was a few short steps to SNCC and the Deep South.

The segment on the early 1960s, in which Carmichael relates his first-hand experience of key events of the times, are the most absorbing. Though the story of the Freedom Rides and SNCC's organizing in Mississippi have been told often, Carmichael's recounting is still gripping. The violence directed at activists was horrific, the sadism of white supremacists chilling, the determination of black Southerners inspiring. These chapters are especially timely as an antidote to contemporary rhetoric. As today's White House paints terrorism as a creation of foreigners with dark skins, Ready for Revolution reminds us of a much longer history of terrorism's white American face. Terrorism was not just the product of a few fanatical extremists; it was indirectly abetted by the political leadership of the South whose representatives, such as Richard Russell and James Eastland, occupied powerful positions in Congress.

Yet these parts are the exception. The book is endlessly repetitive and, as it progresses, becomes heavy with leaden political rhetoric. Even the most committed reader will find it hard to slog through its 800-plus pages; half as long would have proven twice as good. Frequent digressions distract from what might have been a powerful central narrative. Thelwell compounds this problem with long insertions of supplementary material. The result is neither autobiography nor history, but a hodgepodge of memory and commentary that obscures rather than illuminates.

Occasionally something of Carmichael's magnetism seeps through. The courage, warmth and compassion of the man, the sharp intellect and devilish sense of humor, are all there. But so, too, are arrogance, rigidity and a tendency toward provocation that is emotionally satisfying but harmful in a democratic movement to transform society. What does one make of someone who claims, 30 years after the fact, that "I was right. I was on the side of history"? Such statements recall old-line communists confidently waiting for "the Final Conflict."

If Carmichael's historical role ever gets its due, it will be because someone else uses Ready for Revolution as raw material for a biography. But we might then discover that the limitations of this book came not from poor editing but from a life that took a long, tragic detour away from political effectiveness and social influence. Carmichael spent most of his last 30 years in Africa, where he changed his name to Kwame Ture in honor of two men (Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Toure) who were heroes of the African independence movements. Yet these decades are barely touched upon, as if in tacit recognition that the revolution Carmichael was ready for was nowhere in sight.

Reviewed by John D'Emilio

Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Reviews

ACTION-ADVENTURE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A GREAT "BLACK POWER" REVOLUTIONARY
This opus is Stokely Carmichael's (Kwame Ture's) last known, wonderful, parting gift to us--his autobiography, covering his rich political career and adventurous life.

It explains his unique contributions to the 500-year,long, political Struggle of over 38 million marginalized Africans-in-America for liberty, equality, justice and freedom--in the face of brutal white-racist terrorism--supported (directly/indirectly) by America's elites who allowed "apart-hate" relations to persist in the country (while they blathered for decades about fighting wars to promote democracy and freedom abroad).

If you are old enough to have read and heard the plethora of vicious slanders against Carmichael--orchestrated by enemies of freedom operating in the mainstream media--you will now be able to correlate their untruths with details,facts and specific events provided in this 835 pages book to draw your own conclusion.

Carmichael rode the "freedom train" with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. into the veritable pits of racist hell "down" South, as Americans struggled for civil rights during the 1960s, risking imprisonment, police beatings, water hoses, dogs and even life and limbs.

It is a miracle that he survived the treacheries of the period to tell this tale. Some of his great collaborators did not make it, including Malcolm X and Dr. King. They were among those criminally put down by assassins during the 1960s.

It is indeed a miracle that the well-known "Black Power" activist, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) wrote this big book, along with his life-long friend, Michael Thelwell, while dying from cancer. Carmichael died in 1998 at the age of 57.

Carmichael's book reads like an action-adventure novel, filled with chair-gripping dangers and humor.

Carmichael, the Black Power activist was clearly more like Dr. King, a non-violent revolutionary and a great story teller.

After picking up this book, you will set it down later only to discover that you have read its 800 pages without noticing the time expended.

See also:

The Harder They Come

In-Dependence from Bondage: Claude McKay and Michael Manley: Defying the Ideological Clash and Policy Gaps in African Diaspora Relations

Stokely Speaks: From Black Power to Pan-Africanism

Charlie Lomax, Reviewer for Turning Pages Book Club
This autobiographical and historical overview chronicles the experiences of Stokely Carmichael's(Kwame Ture)from his childhood in Trinidad throughout the "Civil Rights Movement" and his entire life.
This book is a must read for high-school and college level students who want a glimpse into the lives of people who were deeply involved as students during the "Civil Rights Movement" during the 60's .
Although,the book is very lengthy and somewhat tedious to read the information , is paramount to the history of African Americans and a great legacy to Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer and other leaders during that era and before who dedicated their lives to fighting for "Civil Rights" for people globally.
Stokely Carmichael along with Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, John Edgar Wideman and other SNCC members revisit their organizing days as students at Howard University ,which turned out to be not only historical but some very life changing events for them, their families and African Americans in the U.S. and the Diaspora.

Amazing Book
I just finished this book today and I must say it is an amazing book. He leaves no stone unturned in going through his amazing life. It is in the tradition of so many other books, Frederick Douglas, Du Bois, Malcolm X, and many others. A great bok to read for all those who wish to learn more about him and the times in which he lived.

Ready for revolution.