Urges Blacks "to Retaliate": Black Power advocate Stokely Carmichael urged black people to arm themselves with guns and take to the streets in retaliation for the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Carmichael blamed President Johnson and Senator Robert Kennedy (Democrat-NY), along with the rest of the nation's white population, for the death of Dr. King. "We have to retaliate," he said at a news conference in Washington.

Kwame Ture (born Stokely Carmichael, 1941-1998) was a prominent organizer in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States and the global Pan-African movement. Born in Trinidad, he grew up in the United States from the age of 11 and became an activist while attending Howard University. Carmichael eventually developed the Black Power movement, first while leading the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), later serving as the Honorary Prime Minister of the Black Panther Party (BPP), and finally as a leader of the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP). Carmichael was one of the original SNCC freedom riders of 1961 under Diane Nash's leadership, and he became a major voting rights activist in Mississippi and Alabama after being mentored by Ella Baker and Robert Parris Moses. Like most young people in SNCC, Carmichael became disillusioned with the two-party system after the 1964 Democratic National Convention failed to recognize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party as official delegates from the state. He chose to develop independent black political organizations, such as the Lowndes County Freedom Organization and, for a time, the national Black Panther Party. Inspired by Malcolm X's example, Carmichael articulated a philosophy of "black power" and popularized it both by provocative speeches and more sober writings. Carmichael became one of the most popular and controversial Black leaders of the late 1960s. J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, secretly identified him as the man most likely to succeed Malcolm X as America's "black messiah." The FBI targeted Carmichael for personal destruction through its COINTELPRO program, and he fled to Africa in 1968. He re-established himself in Ghana, and then Guinea by 1969, where he adopted the new name of Kwame Ture.

On recto: typewritten title and date.
On verso: typewritten title, manuscript date, date stamps and newspaper caption affixed.

Wire photographs were originally transmitted over phonelines, then later, by satellite. They were first used in the early 1920s. Associated Press became a leader with this. After pigment touch-ups, etc., the print is put into a drum (like a drum scanner). The image gets converted into audio tones that are transmitted. The tones are received and beamed onto photo-sensitive paper. Wire photographs are copies without originals---they are hybrid, transmitted objects. (Britt Salvesen, Curator and Department Head, Photography Department, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, March 30-31, 2022)

This object has the following keywords:

• Assassinations
• Black Power
• Civil Rights Movements
• Injustice
• Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Press Conferences
• Racial Discrimination
• Stokely Carmichael
• Washington DC

• Image Dimensions: 6 13/16 x 9 9/16 in. (17.3 x 24.29 cm) Measured by Cornejo-Reynoso, Aitzin
• Sheet Dimensions: 8 1/16 x 10 in. (20.48 x 25.4 cm) Measured by Cornejo-Reynoso, Aitzin