Biography
Stokely Carmichael, later known as Kwame Ture, was a civil rights organizer and chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee who popularized the slogan Black Power. He was first arrested in Jackson, Mississippi as part of a 1961 Freedom Ride and spent 49 days in Mississippi's Parchman Penitentiary in solitary confinement within the maximum security block for men on death row. He was arrested at least 32 more times over the following decade for civil rights organizing. He spent his last decades in Conakry, Guinea, organizing through the All-African People's Revolutionary Party.
Payne describes Carmichael’s distinct 1966 Greenwood arrest during the Meredith march, after a dispute over whether marchers could camp on school grounds. Father Machesky obtained his release on bail, after which Carmichael spoke at the evening rally associated with the Black Power slogan. The account supplies no exact arrest day, first physical jail admission or actual duration. His reference to a twenty-seventh arrest is not treated as twenty-seven newly documented cases.
Source: Charles Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom (2007 edition), original PDF page 248; Charles Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom (2007 edition), original PDF page 278; Charles Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom (2007 edition), original PDF page 279.
