FLOYD McKISSICK STOKELY CARMICHAEL BLACK POWER HOWARD UNIVERSITY 1966 PHOTO

Description

VINTAGE PRESS PHOTO FEATURING FLOYD McKISSICK AND STOKELY CARMICHAEL.
There is a newspaper clipping affixed to the back, with the same photo, and the text: "Floyd McKissick and Stokely Carmichael embraced after McKissick addressed an audience on black power at Howard University in Washington. – AP photo."
There is a stamped date on the clipping: "OCT 27 1966." Also stamped on the back: "RECEIVED EXAMINER REFERENCE LIBRARY OCT 29 1966." There is another stamp, partially covered by the clipping with instructions and/or information.
UNMOUNTED.
SIZE. Approximately 7 1/8 x 8 5/8 inches.
CONDITION. Unevenly trimmed. Some soiling, spots, and small marks. A few light creases. Back has soiling and some discoloration.
APPEARANCE. Glossy. Good to very good tones. Great close-up shot.
FLOYD McKISSICK. "As national director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) from 1966 to 1968, Floyd McKissick’s tenure with the organization was dominated by controversy over Black Power. Although the media was quick to focus on areas of disagreement between McKissick and Martin Luther King, the two leaders sought to downplay their differences, stressing their 'brotherhood' and areas of mutual respect and agreement. Born 9 March 1922 in Asheville, North Carolina, McKissick attended Morehouse College in Atlanta for a year before leaving to serve in World War II. After the war, McKissick joined CORE and served as the youth chairman for the North Carolina branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He studied at Morehouse again for the 1947–1948 school year, King’s last at the college. When he was denied admission to the all-white University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, Law School, he enrolled at the law school of North Carolina Central College (NCCC). McKissick brought suit, and with the support of NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall, a judge ruled in favor of McKissick in 1951 and granted him admission to UNC. Although he had already earned his degree from NCCC, McKissick and three other black students enrolled in UNC law courses that summer. As an attorney, McKissick defended civil rights activists who were arrested for participating in sit-ins at segregated lunch counters and represented his own children in a public school desegregation lawsuit. In another well-publicized legal challenge against the Tobacco Workers International Union (AFL-CIO), he successfully won the right of black workers admitted to the skilled scale to maintain their seniority. McKissick, who also handled cases for CORE, was elected chairman of CORE’s national board in 1963 and became national director three years later. When James Meredith was shot in 1966 while marching from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, McKissick and King decided to resume his march. Stokely Carmichael, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), soon joined them, and the three organizations co-led the Meredith March Against Fear. Carmichael’s proclamation of 'Black Power' quickly exposed growing differences among CORE, SNCC, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and within the civil rights movement. McKissick embraced Black Power, but defined the term to mean building political and economic power in African American communities. In the late 1960s, King’s and McKissick’s philosophies also diverged with respect to nonviolence. After the Meredith March, McKissick continued to advocate nonviolence as a tactic in demonstrations, but maintained that black activists had a right to strike back when hit, arguing that 'self-defense and nonviolence are not incompatible.' King consistently condemned strategies of reprisal and refused to take 'programmatic action around defensive violence.' Despite these areas of difference, King and McKissick agreed when opposing the Vietnam War, and appeared together in support of black athletes boycotting the 1968 Olympics. When King was assassinated in 1968, McKissick called it 'a horror for us, for all Americans that the apostle of nonviolence should be gunned down on an American street' and advocated a national holiday in King’s honor. McKissick resigned from CORE later that year. In July 1972, McKissick received federal funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to create Soul City, an integrated community under black and white leadership in North Carolina. A few months later, McKissick caused a stir in the African American community when he switched to the Republican Party and later became a minority campaign chairman for President Richard Nixon’s reelection. In 1975 McKissick admitted that the development of Soul City had political implications, but denied any impropriety in government funding for the project. Soul City was declared economically unviable in 1979, and the land was later taken over by the federal government. After returning to the law, McKissick was appointed to a judgeship in the Ninth Judicial District in 1990. He died of lung cancer in 1991, and is buried in Soul City." (source: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University website)
STOKELY CARMICHAEL. "Stokely Carmichael, original name of Kwame Ture, (born June 29, 1941, Port of Spain, Trinidad—died November 15, 1998, Conakry, Guinea), West-Indian-born civil rights activist, leader of Black nationalism in the United States in the 1960s and originator of its rallying slogan, 'Black power.' Carmichael immigrated to New York City in 1952, attended high school in the Bronx, and enrolled at Howard University in 1960. There he joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Nonviolent Action Group. In 1961 Carmichael was one of several Freedom Riders who traveled through the South challenging segregation laws in interstate transportation. For his participation he was arrested and jailed for about 50 days in Jackson, Mississippi. Carmichael continued his involvement with the civil rights movement and SNCC after his graduation with honours from Howard University in 1964. That summer he joined SNCC in Lowndes county, Alabama, for an African American voter registration drive and helped to organize the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, an independent political party. A black panther was chosen as the party’s emblem, a powerful image later adopted in homage by the Black Panther Party. During this period Carmichael and others associated with SNCC supported the nonviolence approach to desegregation espoused by Martin Luther King, Jr., but Carmichael was becoming increasingly frustrated, having witnessed beatings and murders of several civil rights activists. In 1966 he became the chairman of SNCC, and during a march in Mississippi he rallied demonstrators in founding the 'Black power' movement, which espoused self-defense tactics, self-determination, political and economic power, and racial pride. This controversial split from King’s ideology of nonviolence and racial integration was seen by moderate Blacks as detrimental to the civil rights cause and was viewed with apprehension by many whites. Before leaving SNCC in 1968, Carmichael traveled abroad speaking out against political and economic repression and denouncing U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Upon his return, Carmichael’s passport was confiscated and held for 10 months. He left the United States in 1969 and moved with his first wife (1968–79), South African singer Miriam Makeba, to Guinea, West Africa. He also changed his name to Kwame Ture in honour of two early proponents of Pan-Africanism, Ghanaian Kwame Nkrumah and Guinean Sékou Touré. Carmichael helped to establish the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party, an international political party dedicated to Pan-Africanism and the plight of Africans worldwide. In 1971 he wrote Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism." (source: Encyclopedia Britannica)