The Life, Lessons and Teachings of Dr. Kwame Toure ( fna Stokeley Carmichael ), Feat. RBGz A-APRP Study Extension

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"We Want Black Power"




Stokeley Carmichael's
Classic Lecture on Black Power








"Dr. Toure's Dedicated Video Educator"




A Brief Biography
Dr. Kwame Toure
( fna Stokeley Carmichael )
1941-1998

Kwame Ture was born of working class parents in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad on November 15, 1941. When he was seven years old, he migrated to New York City with his parents, and four sisters.. Ture was a brilliant student who excelled at the prestigious Bronx High School of Science, from which he graduated in 1960.

From 1960-1964 Kwame Ture studied philosophy at Howard University. At Howard he was exposed to some of the best minds in the African-American community, studying with such authors as the poet and folklorist, Sterling Brown, and the sociologist and editor, Nathan Hare.

This was period of powerful and creative social activism for African-Americans, and Howard University was one of its centers. The university had been the site of the NAACP's preparations and moot court arguments for the pivotal Brown v. Topeka Board case before the Supreme Court in 1954, and there was a strong human rights tradition among the faculty and student body.

Howard was the seat of the Non-Violent Action Group (NAG), a militant city-wide student protest organization that attacked racism in Washington, DC, rural Maryland and Delaware, where it was as virulent as in the deep south. As the leader of NAG, Ture brought the organization into an affiliation with SNCC (pronounced "snick,") the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. The young people of SNCC had established their organization as the most militant of the civil rights groups in the south through such courageous tactics as the sit-in which defied the laws of segregation by taking black people into places that were forbidden to them.

Kwame Ture's theoretical acumen, oratorical gifts and dauntless courage soon brought him to the leadership of SNCC. Shortly after leaving Howard in 1964, he and other NAG members joined SNCC in a "summer of action" in Mississippi, the state which had earned the reputation as the home of the most murderous white supremacists. Ture was then named regional coordinator of SNCC projects in the Mississippi delta, where he organized the voter registration of a people who had been denied the franchise since the end of Reconstruction.

1964 also was the year of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, (FDP). The Democratic Party of Mississippi refused to accept African-American delegates to the national convention that year though the FDP candidates had met every legal and procedural standard impeccably. FDP's challenge at the
convention was irrefutably sound but the National Democratic Party defied every parliamentary rule and seated the all-white Mississippi delegation. The FDP remained a powerful force however, registering thousands of black Mississippians.

Kwame Ture was elected Chairman of SNCC in 1966, the year of the great march in Mississippi that was in support of James Meredith, who had been turned away from a court-ordered admission to the University of Mississippi Law School. The slogan, "Black Power, coined and popularized by one of his his comrades, Willie Mukasa Ricks" was the rallying cry of that March and Kwame Ture was its primary exponent.

As the Chairman of SNCC, Ture was frequently asked to speak on campuses around the nation. His sharp intellect and persuasive speaking style enabled him to be a major influence on students and others who heard him. He also was a featured speaker at the major peace rallies of time, for he was an implacable foe of the American involvement in the Vietnam War.

A project for which Ture was field organizer was the Lowndes County (Alabama) Freedom Organization. It was during this project that the black panther symbol was first displayed which inspired Huey Newton and other California activists to organize the Black Panther Party. Ture worked closely with the Panthers and briefly served as their Chairman.

Kwame Ture had long been interested in Pan-Africanism, and was a serious student of the writings of the movement's leaders, particularly those of the post-colonial heads of state, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Guinea's Sekou Toure, and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana. His name combines the first name of Nkrumah and the last name of Sekou Toure, both of whom he had the honor of working with, serving for a time as Nkrumah's secretary.

In 1968, he married the great South African singer, Miriam Makeeba.

His work with Nkrumah and Toure led him to found the All-African People's Revolutionary Party whose chairman he remained until his death. In his unflagging efforts to forge a diasporan coalition of African peoples who could stand against imperialism and exploitation, Ture attempted to develop unified social and economic ideology. His study of the writings of the Marxists and of the principles of African socialism led him to scientific socialism, which he advocated for the last thirty years of his life.

Unlike most of the radical activists of the '60's, Kwame Ture never compromised. His was a voice that would accept nothing less than true empowerment for his people even if that meant the dismantling of the
international order that hoards the world's resources and keeps most of its people down. He was especially unforgiving of American capitalism, which he saw as the greatest oppressor on Earth.

Even after his body weakened under assault of prostate cancer, his spirit never faltered and his commitment never flagged. To the end he worked to bring the various elements of the African-American community into coalition. To the end he answered the telephone, "ready for the revolution."

RBGz A-APRP Study Extension
"Nkrumahism-Toureism"

The All-African People's Revolutionary Party (AAPRP) was founded by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. Dr. Nkrumah called for the AAPRP in his book Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare, began in 1966, but because of the imperialist coup in Ghana that year, this book could not be released until 1968. He envisioned the AAPRP as the macro - agency containing and coordinating all the revolutionary parties of the African world. Its purpose was to create and manage the political-economic conditions necessary to the emergence of an All-African People's Revolutionary Army that would lead the military struggle against neo-colonialism, settler colonialism, zionism, imperialism and all other forms of capitalist oppression and exploitation; and for the emergence of Pan-Africanism. This Pan-Africanism would find its proper organizational representation in a United Socialist African government that would encompass the entire African continent. The ideology of the A-APRP is Nkrumahism-Toureism, taking its name from the founder, and his primary colleague in arms, President Ahmed Sekou Toure.

The All-African Women's Revolutionary Union (AAWRU) is the women's wing of the A-APRP. Its main focus is the education and organization of African women, and African people generally, so that our sisters can play their optimal role in the glorious African Revolution and National Liberation Struggle.

RBG Companion articles from :

Full Kwame Afrikan Liberation Lecture

An Overview of the African Centered Perspective in Education: by Uhuru Hotep

Decolonizing the African Mind: Further Analysis and Strategy by Uhuru Hotep

The central objective in decolonising the African mind is to overthrow the authority which alien traditions exercise over the African. This demands the dismantling of white supremacist beliefs, and the structures which uphold them, in every area of African life. It must be stressed, however, that decolonisation does not mean ignorance of foreign traditions; it simply means denial of their authority and withdrawal of allegiance from them.
-Chinweizu-

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