Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture)

By Michael Ekwueme Thelwell, Stokely Carmichael, Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, et al.

Book Overview

The astonishing personal and political autobiography of Stokely Carmichael, the legendary civil rights leader, Black Power architect, Pan-African activist, and revolutionary thinker and organizer known as Kwame Ture.

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684850044
• ISBN13: 9780684850047
• Release Date: February 2005
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 848 Pages
• Weight: 1.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.4" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

A VERY COMPELLING, WELL WRITTEN ACCOUNT OF A LIFE ...THAT COULD OF BEEN PUT TO BETTER USE

This book was excellently well written. The author has written this book demonstrating excellent writing skills. Anyone who is attempting to write can learn a lot from the writing techniques. Pounctuation, grammer, spelling, every thing was well fashioned. As for his life story, 'VERY INTERESTING' I am originally from the island of Trinidad, the same country in which he was born. I had heard of him and became interested in his writing just before his death. His life should be made into a movie. Great reading everyone. You will not want to put down this book.

Indespensible to the history of the civil rights movement

Probably the most powerful book I've ever read on the civil rights movement. I've found a kindred soul in Stokely Carmichael. His common sense way of talking about the rights of MAN vs. just civil rights is unique in the way that it draws from the thoughts of MLK, Lenin/Marx, Malcolm X, some of the great Pan-African leaders, the Black Power movement, and the various socialist and African-American freedom organizations to combine the best of each into a cohesive worldview. His adoption of the African name Kwame Ture is a consummation of this worldview and his rejection of the blatant evils of Western Capitalism, racism, religious oppression, exploitation of man through globalization, the plundering of African resources by Western Powers, and the decadence of secular humanism. At 795 pages the book is not a quick read, but it is a story that is indispensable to the history of the African American. Eukwame Michael Thelwell deserves credit as a superb interpreter of the spoken words of Carmichael into a language of the pen that captures all the passion of a fiery, kind and unforgettable African American revolutionary.

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

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.

The Best Book About the Movement, Jack!

W.E.B. Du Bois' prophetic tag about the color line in America being the problem of the 20th Century (still #1 with a bullet in the 21st)may be the great man's greatest understatement. I marvel that Stokely Carmichael(later Kwame Ture)was able to get his arms around the reality of his life and strange times as profoundly as he does. Fortunately for us, confidence was never his problem. This book is a sustained narrative, in equal parts autobiography, historical analysis, and oral history. Like SNCC itself, this work is focused, disciplined and deeply grounded in the freedom struggles of African people in communities like Cambridge, Maryland, Greenwood, Mississippi and Lowndes County, Alabama. Stokely's recap of events that made the walls of segregation come tumbling down is illuminated by luminaries like Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer. But it's the voices of the real stars of the Movement -- Mr. Hartman Turnbow, E.W. Steptoe, Victoria Gray, Annie Pearl Avery and Endesha Holland -- that, rightly, get pride of place in his retelling. Thanks and praises to Ekwueme Michael Thelwell for midwifing a masterpiece. Show me a biography or an autobiography in which the text does not "stitch together" memory and chronology, fact and fiction, people and places -- and I'll assume you do your reading in the checkout line at the supermarket. Thelwell includes just enough of Stokely's vocal mannerisms to convey his live voice and real personality, without allowing them to become tics and distractions. His parenthetical asides may challenge readers with attention deficit issues, but personally, I found they captured Thelwell unraveling small mysteries about his friend. Check out the one where Thelwell muses about where Carmichael really was during the March on Washington. Readers should be told that this autobiography is a page-turner, it reads like a thriller. High School and College students will learn what all the excitement of the Southern Civil Rights Movement was about. Godwilling they'll be motivated by Stokely's example. There is high literary art in the way Carmichael and Thelwell capture the sweep of events that shaped our own life and times. The stories and homilies are so archetypal, you'll imagine they happened to you -- until you catch yourself realizing that that was Stokely, not you, who fell in love with Miriam Makeba over the radio and then married her in real life. The chorus of voices reveals black and white folks willing to give their lives working for something at the core of our shared humanity. I always knew there were those who do not share that humanity. Stokely's autobiography teaches us that the struggle is so desperately important because they will never stop trying to enslave others by denying them their humanity. You cannot read this narrative and not share Stokely's love for and belief in the struggles of Africans, and indigenous peoples, everywhere.