Today In Labor History June 29, 1941: Stokely Carmichael (1941-1998), founder of the U.S. civil rights group the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad. He was a key figure in the Black Power movement, becoming honorary Prime Minister of the Black Panther Party and, later, as the leader of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party. The FBI attempted to destroy him through COINTELLPRO, and succeeded in convincing Huey Newton that he was a CIA agent. This, and the Panthers’ embracing of white activists into their movement, led him to distance himself from the Panthers. In 1968, he married the famous South African singer Miriam Makeba and moved to Africa, changing his name to Kwame Ture and campaigning internationally for revolutionary socialist pan-Africanism.
