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Amerasian

An Amerasian may refer to a person born in East or Southeast Asia to an East Asian or Southeast Asian mother and a U.S. military father. Other terms used include War babies or G.I. babies.

Several countries in East and Southeast Asia have significant populations of Amerasians, reflecting a history of US military presence within those two respective regions. These include Okinawa (Japan), South Korea, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines. The latter once had the largest US air and naval bases outside the US mainland.

Definitions

The term was coined by novelist Pearl S. Buck and was formalized by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Many people were born to East or Southeast Asian women and U.S. servicemen during World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. The official definition of Amerasian came about as a result of Public Law 97-359, enacted by the 97th Congress of the United States on October 22, 1982.

According to the United States Department of Justice and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), an Amerasian is: "[A]n alien who was born in Korea, Kampuchea, Laos, Thailand or Vietnam after December 31, 1950 and before October 22, 1982 and was fathered by a U.S. citizen." The Amerasian Foundation (AF) and Amerasian Family Finder (AFF) define an Amerasian as "Any person who was fathered by a citizen of the United States (an American serviceman, American expatriate or U.S. Government Employee (Regular or Contract)) and whose mother is or was, an Asian National."

The term is commonly applied to half Japanese children fathered by a U.S. serviceman based in Japan, as well as half Korean children fathered by veterans of the Korean War or stationary soldiers in South Korea. The term is also applied to children of Filipinos and American rulers during the U.S. colonial period of the Philippines (still used until today) and children of Thais and U.S. soldiers during World War II and the Vietnam War. The U.S. had bases in Thailand during the Vietnam War.

Amerasian should not be interpreted as a fixed racial term relating to a specific category of multiracial groups (such as Mestizo, Mulatto, Eurasian or Afro-Asians). The racial strain of the American parent of one Amerasian may be different from that of another Amerasian; it may be White, Black, Hispanic or even Asians in general. In the latter case, it is conceivable that the Amerasian could be fathered by a person who shares the same racial stock, but not necessarily the same nationality.

In certain cases, the term could also apply to the progency of American females, who engaged in professions such as military nursing for East and Southeast Asian males. Mixed-race children, whatever the occupational background or prestige of their parents, have suffered social stigma. With genetic relation to U.S. soldiers, Amerasians have faced additional exclusion by perceived association to being military enemies of East and Southeast Asian countries. This stigma extended to the mothers of Amerasians, majority of whom were Asian, causing many of the Asian mothers to abandon their Amerasian children. The abandonment of both parents led to a large proportion of orphaned Amerasians.

Cambodia
The Amerasian Immigration Act included Amerasians whose fathers were U.S. citizens and whose mothers were nationals of Kampuchea (Cambodia). As many as 10,000 Cambodians of mixed Amerasian ancestry may have been fathered by US servicemen.

Japan

According to one estimate, around 5,000 to 10,000 Amerasian babies had been born in Japan from 1945 to 1952. Data from the Japanese Welfare Ministry from July 1952, on the other hand, revealed that only 5,013 Japanese Amerasian children were born in all of Japan. Masami Takada from the Welfare Ministry put an exaggerated estimate of 150,000 – 200,000. Another investigation by the Welfare Ministry was conducted again in August 1953, this time them revising the number to reveal that only 3,490 half-castes of American fathers and Japanese mothers had been born during the 7 years of American occupation of Japan, which lasted from 1945 – 1952. Some of the children were abandoned and raised in orphanages such as the Elizabeth Saunders Home in Oiso, Japan.

The actual number of Japanese Amerasians is unknown. Officially, the number of 10,000 Amerasians in Japan would be an upper limit. Some contemporary writers had however reported rumors of 200,000 while actual numbers had been found to be 5,000, possibly 10,000, no more than 20,000 allowing for underestimates. Of those fathered by American soldiers. Their presumed "colors" were 86.1% "white," 11.5% "black" and 2.5% "unknown."

Hāfu
Today, many Japanese Amerasians go by the term Hāfu, which is used to refer to a person who is half Japanese and half non-Japanese ancestry.

Amerasian School of Okinawa
In Okinawa, The Amerasian School of Okinawa was formed to educate children of two different cultures. The school population includes Japanese Amerasians.

Laos
The Amerasian Immigration Act included Amerasians whose fathers were U.S. citizens and whose mothers were nationals of Laos. The number of Laotian Amerasians is currently unknown.

The Forgotten Amerasians
Since 1898, when the United States annexed the Philippines from Spain, there were as many as 21 U.S. bases and 100,000 U.S. military personnel stationed there. The bases closed in 1992 leaving behind thousands of Amerasian children. There are an estimated 52,000 Amerasians in the Philippines. According to an academic research paper presented in the U.S. (in 2012) by a Philippines Amerasian college research study unit, the number could be a lot more, possibly reaching 250,000, this is due the fact almost all generations of Amerasians intermarried with other Amerasians and Filipino natives. The newer Amerasians from the United States would add to the already older settlement of peoples from other countries in the Americas that happened when the Philippines was under Spanish rule. The Philippines once received immigrants from Spanish-occupied Panama, Peru, and Mexico.

Unlike their counterparts in other countries, American-Asians or Amerasians in the Philippines remain impoverished and neglected. A study by the University of the Philippines' Center for Women Studies found that many Amerasians have experienced some form of abuse and/or domestic violence. The findings cited cases of racial, gender and class discrimination that Amerasian children and youth suffer from strangers, peers, classmates and teachers. The study also said black Amerasians seem to suffer more from racial and class discrimination than their white-descended counterparts.

Two-thirds of Amerasian children are raised by single mothers, others by relatives and non-relatives. Six percent live on their own or in institutions, and 90 percent were born out of wedlock. It was reported in 1993 that prostitutes are increasingly Amerasian (especially black amerasian females), and frequently children of prostitutes who are caught in a cycle that transcends generations.

Legal action
In 1982, the U.S. passed the Amerasian Immigration Act, giving preferential immigration status to Amerasian children born during the Vietnam Conflict. The act did not apply to Amerasians born in the Philippines. They can become United States citizens only if claimed by their fathers; most fathers fail to do so. To become citizens of the United States, Filipino Amerasians must be able to show proof of parentage by a U.S. citizen before they turn eighteen years old; most are unable to do so before that cut off age.

A class-action suit was filed in 1993 on their behalf in the International Court of Complaints in Washington, DC, to establish Filipino American children's rights to assistance. The court denied the claim, ruling that the children were born to unmarried women who provided sexual services to U.S. service personnel in the Philippines and who were therefore engaged in illicit acts of prostitution. Such illegal activity could not be the basis for any legal claim.

South Korea

Since the Korean War, there has been a significant population of Amerasians in South Korea. Many Amerasians were born into "Camptowns" which were established by the South Korean government. The women in these Camptowns were affected by the post-war poverty and turned to prostitution with American soldiers. This perpetuated the stereotype that children born in Camptown's were mothered by prostitutes. The South Korean government never viewed Korean Amerasians as Korean citizens. Hence, the government encouraged the foreign adoption of mixed South Korean babies. United States Congress passed the 1953 Refugee Relief Act which allowed 4000 Amerasians to emigrate to the US for adoption. This group became commonly known as Korean Adoptees. They were part of the International adoption of South Korean children that made up roughly 160,000 adoptees.

Amerasian Christian Academy
The Amerasian Christian Academy still educates Amerasian children today in Gyeonggi-Do, South Korea.

Taiwan
US soldiers fathered children in Taiwan at the end of World War II. Today there are an estimated 1,000 Taiwanese Amerasians. Over 200,000 American soldiers in Korea and Vietnam visited Taiwan for rest and relaxation between 1950 and 1975.

Thailand
In Thailand, Amerasian children are dubbed as Luk khrueng or half children in the Thai language. These Amerasians were fathered by US soldiers who took part in the Vietnam War. At the height of the Vietnam War, 50,000 GIs were based in Thailand. The Pearl S. Buck Foundation estimated around 5,000-8,000 Thai Amerasians. Some migrated to the United States under the 1982 Amerasian Immigration Act. An unknown number were left behind. "I had trouble at school. I was teased and bullied a lot because of my skin color," says entertainer Morris Kple Roberts, who had an African American father and a Thai mother.

Searches
US veteran, Gene Ponce, helps American fathers find their Thai Amerasian children. He has recently used popular DNA services, such as Ancestry.com to help match Amerasians with their relatives in the US.

Vietnam
The exact number of Amerasians in Vietnam is not known. The U.S. soldiers stationed in Vietnam had relationships with local females, many of the women had origins in nightclubs, brothels and pubs. The American Embassy once reported there were fewer than 1,000 Amerasians. A report by the South Vietnamese Senate Subcommittee suggested there are 15,000 to 20,000 children of mixed European American and Vietnamese ancestry, but this figure was considered low. Congress estimated 20,000 to 30,000 Amerasians by 1975 lived in Vietnam. According to Amerasians Without Borders, they estimated about 25,000 to 30,000 Vietnamese Amerasians were born from American first participation in Vietnam in 1962 and lasted until 1975. Although during the Operation Babylift it was estimated at 23,000. In April 1975, Operation Babylift was initiated in South Vietnam to relocate Vietnamese children, many orphans and those of mixed American-Vietnamese parentage (mostly Vietnamese mothers and American serviceman fathers), to the United States and find American families who would take them in. The crash of the first flight of Operation Babylift led to the death of 138 people, 78 of which were children. During the operation, they estimated over 3,000 Amerasians were evacuated from South Vietnam; however, more than 20,000 Amerasians remained.

In July 1979, The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) created the Orderly Departure Program in order to mitigate safer travel conditions for Vietnamese refugees to various nations after the Vietnam War. However, since its inception to mid 1982, only 23 Amerasians successfully emigrated under the Orderly Departure Program. By October 1982, there was more hope for Amerasian emigration as the largest group of 11 Amerasian children, aged seven to fifteen, departed from Vietnam to immigrate to the U.S.

In 1982, the U.S. Congress passed the Amerasian Immigration Act in an attempt to grant Amerasian immigration to the U.S. However, the Amerasian Immigration Act provided great emigration difficulty for many Vietnamese Amerasians, due to a lack of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the Vietnamese government. This was due to a clause in the Amerasian Immigration Act that required documentation of the fathers in the U.S. in order for the Vietnamese Amerasians to acquire a visa. However, around 500 Amerasians were still able to safely immigrate to the U.S. between 1982 and 1983 due to Hanoi's cooperating with the U.S. In 1988, U.S. Congress passed the American Homecoming Act, aiming to grant citizenship to Vietnamese Amerasians born between 1962 and 1975. By 1994, more than 75,000 Amerasians and their family from Vietnam immigrated to the U.S. The American Homecoming act eventually led to 23,000 Amerasians and 67,000 of their relatives immigrating to the U.S. For the Vietnamese Amerasians, this meant that their migration to the U.S. occurred as teenagers, leading to struggles in the resettlement process. A study in 1994 found that 22 percent of Amerasian men and 18 percent of Amerasian women residing in the U.S. reported physical or sexual abuse. By 2018, at least 400 Amerasians still currently reside Vietnam through DNA testing of 500 people by the nonprofit organization Amerasians Without Borders.

Vietnamese Amerasian Search Organizations
Up to the 2000s, many Vietnamese Amerasians were still not reunited with their fathers. Some Amerasians still resided in Vietnam unable to obtain the necessary documents to emigrate to the US. Organizations such as the Amerasian Child Find Network, run by Clint Haines and AAHope Foundation, run by Jonathan Tinquist, helped American fathers reunite with their Amerasian children. Both are Vietnam Vets.

Other organizations that helped with Amerasian, Adoptee and family searches included the Adopted Vietnamese International (AVI) (Indigo Willing) and Operation Reunite (Trista Goldberg). The only current active US organization seeking to reunite Amerasians is Amerasian Without Borders (AWB) run by Jimmy Miller, a Vietnamese Amerasian based in the US.

Notable Vietnamese Amerasians

 * Johnathon Franklin Freeman was a film producer, actor and production manager born in Saigon, Vietnam to a Vietnamese mother and an American serviceman. His mother sent Johnathan and his sister to an orphanage where they were eventually sent to the US as part of Operation Babylift. He was married to Kim Fields from 1995 to 2001. In February 2007, the Amerasian Family Finder cooperating with the Amerasian Foundation found his mother in Saigon who he reunited in May 2007. He died on August 21, 2020.
 * Phi Nhung - Phạm Phi Nhung was born on 10 April 1970 in Pleiku, Vietnam to a Vietnamese mother and an American serviceman father. She was a singer who specialized in Dan Ca and Tru Tinh music. On 26 August 2021 she was hospitalized to Cho Ray Hospital after contracting COVID-19. About a month later, her health took a turn for the worse.  Phi Nhung died on 28 September 2021 due to COVID-19 complications.
 * Thanh Hà - Trương Minh Hà was born in Đà Nẵng, Vietnam to a Vietnamese mother and an American serviceman father of German origin. She is a Vietnamese American singer known under the stage name as Thanh Hà.

International Amerasian Day
March 4 has been designated as Amerasian Day in the Philippines. The Amerasian Foundation has designated it as International Amerasian Day.

In popular culture

 * The 1957 film Sayonara features a Japanese woman who falls in love with a white serviceman and they talk about having mixed children together.
 * In the anime and manga franchise Great Mazinger ("Guretto Majinga" in Japanese), the character of Jun Honoo is the daughter of a Japanese woman and a U.S. African American serviceman. As such, she had to endure stigma and racism during her youth due to her status as "hafu" and her darker skin compared to Amerasians born from white parents.
 * In the 1972 TV series M*A*S*H, episode 15 of season 8, "Yessir, That's Our Baby", Hawkeye and BJ attempt to send an Amerasian baby to the United States, facing difficulty at every step of the way. With no other viable solution, they act on Father Mulcahy's advice and take the baby to a monastery in the dead of night to provide her with safety and care.
 * "Straight to Hell", a song by rock music group the Clash, considers the plight of Vietnam War Amerasians.
 * The 1977 movie Green Eyes starred Paul Winfield as a Vietnam War veteran who returns to Vietnam in search of the son he fathered with a Vietnamese woman.
 * The Chuck Norris film Braddock: Missing in Action III (1988) depicted Amerasian children trapped in Vietnam; Norris plays the father of an Amerasian child who believes that his Vietnamese wife died during the Fall of Saigon.
 * In the 1984 TV series Highway to Heaven, episode 11 of season 1, titled "Dust Child," the two lead characters Jonathan, played by Michael Landon and Mark, played by Victor French, help an Amerasian girl facing racial prejudice when she goes to live with her father's family in the United States.
 * In the 1988 TV series In the Heat of the Night, episode 9 of season 3, titled "My Name is Hank," an Amerasian teenager named Hank believes that he was fathered by a deceased police officer once employed by the Sparta, Mississippi police department.
 * The Oscar-nominated 1995 film Dust of Life tells the story of Son, a boy with a Vietnamese mother and African American father, who is interned in a Re-education camp.
 * In the 1997 animated television sitcom King of the Hill, Hank discovers that he has an Amerasian brother living in Japan.
 * In the 1999 American Vietnamese language film Three Seasons, James Hager, played by Harvey Keitel, searches for his Vietnamese Amerasian daughter in hopes of "coming to peace with this place".
 * The 2001 novel The Unwanted by Kien Nguyen is a memoir about the author's experience growing up as an Amerasian in Vietnam until he emigrates to the United States at age eighteen.
 * Daughter from Đà Nẵng is a 2002 award-winning documentary film about an Amerasian woman who returns to visit her biological family in Đà Nẵng, Vietnam after 22 years of separation and living in the United States.
 * The musical Miss Saigon focuses on a young Vietnamese woman who falls in love with an American GI and later has his child after the Fall of Saigon.
 * The 2004 film The Beautiful Country is about an Amerasian boy (played by Damien Nguyen) who leaves his native Vietnam to find his father.
 * In 2007 at TED, Photographer Rick Smolan's The Story of a Girl tells the unforgettable story of a young Amerasian girl, a fateful photograph and an adoption saga with a twist.
 * The 2010 documentary Left by the Ship which aired on PBS Independent Lens in May 2012, follows the lives of four modern Filipino Amerasians for two years, showing the struggle to overcome the stigma related to their birth.
 * The 2014 movie Noble, tells the true life story of Christina Noble, who overcomes the harsh difficulties of her childhood in Ireland to find her calling by helping the Bụi Dời (Vietnamese Amerasians) on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City.
 * In the 2017 book, The Rebirth of Hope: My Journey from Vietnam War Child to American Citizen, by Sau Le Hudecek, Texas Christian University Press. The author recalls the trials she endured growing up in post-war Vietnam as a daughter of an American GI.
 * In 2018, Dateline NBC aired Father's Day, a Vietnamese Amerasian woman takes a DNA test hoping to learn more about her family tree. What she discovers will change her family forever—and send her father to the other side of the globe to confront a past he thought he had left behind.

title: Amerasian


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Talk:Civil religion

Origins of Terms
This section is incomplete, is anyone working on it? \ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.190.187.45 (talk) 02:45, 18 September 2007 (UTC) "The aggressive civil religion of the United States of America is an occasional cause of political friction between the United States and its allies in Europe, where civil religion is relatively muted."

Can it really be said that "civil religion is relatively muted" in France? Michael Hardy 00:45 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * I had ever understood that France was fairly thoroughly secularised, and has no major tradition of political God-talk like the kind that adorns the speeches of nigh every U. S. politician. I am generally aware that they take pride in their national monuments and achievements, but most of those strike me as fairly secular, and some of them celebrate the overthrow of Throne and Altar.  If this ain't so, add it to the article; I would be interested in knowing more!  -- IHCOYC 00:55 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

But I meant they have a sort of quasi-religious reverence for great Frenchmen of the past. Michael Hardy 23:21 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

 * Seems to me that this is more of a matter of the definition of "religion," then, rather than whether it's civil or not. I've no doubt that the French have a stock of improving legends about historical personages the same way that Americans have them about Washington, Lincoln, and Franklin.  They too erect imposing public monuments and treat them with quasi-reverence, and have shrines to secular martyrs.  But my impression is that the French seldom if ever invoke a Deity in connection with these shrines, the way Americans often do.

 * Expand the definition of religion wide enough, and you can argue that Communist May Day parades and personality cults of the dictators are religions. But this involves putting words in other people's mouths.  American politicians can't hardly open their mouths without mentioning God; it seems reasonable to call this religious activity.  Americans claim that their "institutions presuppose a Supreme Being," or some such.  It seems hard to imagine the French making such a grand claim about their --- which is it, the fifth? --- republic.  The French don't seem to feel the need for that hypothesis.  -- IHCOYC 00:46 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I have created a page on Civic religions to cover dictorial ideologies which supplant established religions. You just reminded me to add personality cult to the page. Please use my page to write about such things, since this page seems to deal with more benign forms, such as patriotism and is not the same thing. Any questions or comments please direct to my talk page or that on the page on Civic religions. Thanks--naryathegreat 22:06, Jul 7, 2004 (UTC)

Another idea, merge this with Folk religion, it is really the same thing twice, but both have unique ideas and genuinely good content, i would not have thought of this. Also, tone down the anti-U.S. POV please (see WP:NPOV), that's borderline offensive rhetoric you got there.--naryathegreat 22:15, Jul 7, 2004 (UTC)

 * I don't think there's a great deal of POV in the article itself; I try to keep it down there. Somewhat more leeway is allowed on talk pages; they exist to thrash out that sort of thing in any case.  I suspect it's more anti-French than anti-US POV in any case.  Smerdis of Tlön 01:52, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Why isn´t there any references to the sociologist Robert N. Bellah in this article? Neither is there any reference to Jean-Jacques Rosseau, that in his "The Social Contract" (in 1792) used this expression on a phenomena that intigrates the members of society. An academic debate related to the term started out in 1967 when Robert N. Bellah´s essay "Civil Religion in America" was published. Bellah was the first to develop an sociological theory on Civil Religion. His definition goes "an institutionalized collection of sacred beliefs about the American nation". I feel the article misses a very important fact, when Rosseau, Bellah and others are excluded as references in the article, and I also think that a lot of the definition and language in the article owes an reference to Bellah.

PeterKristo 10:13, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * I have added references to Bellah and Rousseau, as well as to Martin E. Marty. I rather hesitated to add the reference to Marty and Bellah, because they do make the article even more US-centric, but then perhaps that's inevitable.

 * Is there anyone who still thinks this article has POV problems? Been this way since July, w/o anyone stepping up to the plate and changing what is supposed to be thought to be that way.  I think the paragraphs on the USA are descriptive, not particularly judgmental, and accurate as they stand currently.  Smerdis of Tlön 15:14, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * I added a reference focusing more on fascism and communism (Gentile) so that should satisfy someone about POV. FINginga (talk) 12:08, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

When did we start capitilizing the first letter of the word when ever we referenced God and why do we still do this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chrisvrulez (talk • contribs) 20:49, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Merger
I suspect this article ought to be merged with civic religion after some really really drastic revising of the latter article. See Talk:civic religion for some comments on how that article ought to be changed. Michael Hardy 19:25, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * I think this is possible. Term 'civic religion' on Google nets 4,370 hits. Not much, but it does exist. Define: doesn't give any results though. 'civil religion' has 18,700 and no definitions neither. While civiC seems to cover more extreme versions, if I understand this correctly, both refer to a situation where certain (dominating in cases of civic) fractions in the goverment use certain aspects of certain religions for broadly understood propaganda reasons, yes? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 10:38, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * Civil religion and "civic religion" seem to me to be talking about two different things. Civil religion, as I have always understood it, is an aspect of folk religion.  It is practiced by political leaders or in public shrines, but is essentially sincere, meant to be consistent with a pre-existing religion, and relatively unplanned.  What "civic religion" seems to be talking about is a deliberate extension of a cult of personality, devised by leaders to compete with an existing religion.  I'm not all too sure that the two pages are really compatible.  Google doesn't seem to have a trend towards using "civic religion" and "civil religion" as being distinct; the beginning hits hits instead speak of "a new civic religion in America," "baseball as civic religion," civic religion in renaissance Bologna, Howard Dean's civic religion, and like "civil religion" seem to refer chiefly to the USA.  Nothing in the Google hits suggested to me that "civic religion" referred to a more oppressive, planned, or atheistic variety.  If there's stuff worth saving at civic religion, it might be better merged with cult of personality than here.  The cult of personality page wants expansion anyways; it refers almost exclusively to political leaders, and not to figures such as Sun Myung Moon.   Smerdis of Tlön

 * They're definitely NOT compatible as civic religion is now written, but I was thinking of totally rewriting that one and making the whole cult-of-personality topic into essentially just one topic within "civic religion", referring only to the most extreme form. Michael Hardy 19:21, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * It reads just fine now. (Except, maybe, for the formatting. }:-)  It does also help to integrate the French national traditions discussed above within the context of political ritual, but not necessarily claiming divine sanction.  Smerdis of Tlön 20:57, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * No, Smerdis, it is bad. The tone makes Americans seem like primitive neanderthals, worshiping the local phallic-shaped rock. Sorry, but most Americans tend to get offtnded at that, myself included. In that context, reference should be made to the fact that the US was settled by people motivated primarily by religion. (See the Pilgrims, for one example.) Sorry if we're not as secular as Europeans may like, but we're coming from an entirely different background. -- Penta 22:38, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * I thought we did worship a phallic shaped rock. When did this change?  AAR, I have expanded that section a bit with a mention of religious settlers and freedom of religion leading to competition between denominations in the public sphere.  I also changed "aggressive" to "assertive."  If you still don't like it, be bold, step up to the plate and make changes you think will improve it.  Smerdis of Tlön 23:30, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

"A god" instead of "God"
I reverted a recent edit that changed the line concerning the "invocation of a god" on public monuments, etc. The Ara Pacis, cited as an example of civil religion later in the text, is not dedicated to "God" as the capital G word is currently understood. The text should cover all of these bases. Smerdis of Tlön 02:20, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC) I expanded on how in the Pledge of Allegiance we say "under God" right before the end of it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chrisvrulez (talk • contribs) 20:46, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Merge with political religion
I think the article on Political religion should be subsumed with this one. Everything I read on this shouts "Nationalism". [Promsan] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.114.3.143 (talk) 15:28, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Well its not about nationalism, or plain nationalism. Its also about many other ideologies put into action, say Capitalism or Communism. FINginga (talk) 12:01, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Secular baptisms
In France, because of the country's traditions of civil religion, there are unusual ceremonies of secular baptisms, sometimes called republican baptisms. It could be maybe be mentioned in the article as a peculiar kind of child sponsorship. ADM (talk) 04:56, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Affirmation vs. Swearing
saying "I do solemnly affirm..." does not imply mention of God would be expected. The option of affirming instead of swearing is made to accommodate religious groups that consider swearing wrong, such as Quakers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.167.17.12 (talk) 17:11, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Classical antiquity
There are so many things wrong with the section on Classical antiquity (which I separated out from the History section) that I don't even know how to start discussing it. But since I tagged it for factual accuracy, I wanted to open the discussion here. First of all, there's no such thing as "Classical paganism" except from the later point of view of Christianity; Christian polemic lumped various religions practiced in ancient Greece and Rome together as "paganism," but the religious practices of classical Athens, for instance, are a world apart from the traditional Roman religion (sometimes called the "religion of Numa") that was "revived" and innovated upon by Augustus, giving rise to Imperial cult. There seems to be confusion in this section between "civil religion" and "state religion" or "public religion." Will try to help, but I'm not sure where to start. Cynwolfe (talk) 11:58, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

 * I agree on the paganism part. It´s good though you have´nt erased the whole page as some do... However I do not agree on the latter part on confusion of terms. The field is highly debated and confused in its self, so any nitpicking about the concepts would be, lets say, childish. More relevant would be mentioning the confusion WITH some academic references, which you did´nt mention. FINginga (talk) 11:52, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Original research
I do not see this article containing original research. Would someone be more precise about that? If no answer, at some point later I´ll check the article and erase the note. FINginga (talk) 12:15, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

 * Please don't remove the tag. See, for instance, the substantial sections that have no footnotes at all. Of course, if you want to provide sources for these claims, that would be super. Otherwise, the tag should remain unless these sections are deleted. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:33, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * the issue of missing citations is entirely separate. Delete tag. Rjensen (talk) 12:03, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

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Christian Kane

Christian Kane (born Christopher Michael Short) is an American actor and singer-songwriter. His television roles include Lindsey McDonald in Angel, Eliot Spencer in Leverage and its spin-off Leverage: Redemption, Jacob Stone in The Librarians, and Abe "High Wolf" Wheeler in Into the West. His cinematic filmography includes Just Married, Taxi, and Secondhand Lions.

Kane is the lead singer of the country-southern rock band Kane. On December 7, 2010, they released The House Rules, their third album and their debut for record label Bigger Picture Music Group. The album reached no. 25 on the Billboard Country Albums chart. The first single from the album, also titled "The House Rules", debuted at no. 54 on the Billboard Country Songs chart. The second single, “Let Me Go”, was released on July 11, 2011.

Early life
Kane has stated that he is of Cherokee (Native American) ancestry. His parents participated in, and met at, the rodeo. The family moved around the South because his father was in the oil business, and they finally settled in Norman, Oklahoma, when Kane was in eighth grade. While growing up in Texas and Oklahoma, Kane was a collegiate-style wrestler and played football (as a strong safety). He studied art history at the University of Oklahoma, but decided he wanted to be an actor and headed to Los Angeles before finishing the degree. In Los Angeles, he worked at a talent management company, where he delivered scripts in exchange for getting acting jobs.

Acting
Kane landed his first acting role in 1997 as one of the leads in MGM's television series Fame L.A. playing a country singer who moved to Los Angeles from Kansas. His television roles have included a recurring role in Joss Whedon’s Angel as the lawyer Lindsey MacDonald, the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced series Close to Home on CBS, the TNT television film Crossfire Trail in which he appeared alongside Tom Selleck, and the role of Abe Wheeler in the Steven Spielberg-produced 2005 miniseries Into the West. He starred as Billy Ryan in the MTV movie Love Song in 2000, alongside R&B artist Monica.

Kane’s appearances on the big screen include the 20th Century Fox film Just Married and New Line Cinema's Secondhand Lions (as the younger version of Robert Duvall's Hub McCann, he has a scar on his upper lip from an injury he received while filming the movie). He also appeared in Taxi, Life or Something Like It, the Peter Berg-directed Friday Night Lights, and the Warner Bros. baseball film Summer Catch.

In 2007, Kane was featured in the Carrie Underwood music video "So Small", playing the role of one of the three converging stories. In 2009, he appeared in the psychological thriller, Hide, in which he played the lead role of Billy, and The Donner Party which is based on the true story of the Donner Party. In 2010, he starred in the romantic drama, Not Since You.

From 2008 to 2012, Kane appeared on the TNT television series Leverage as Eliot Spencer, a retrieval specialist and black ops soldier who teams up with four other specialists to undo the injustices perpetrated upon the helpless. Kane performed all his own fight scenes and also choreographed fights for the series. Kane plays the same character in Leverage:Redemption, which premiered in July 2021, streaming on IMDb TV. The show takes up the team's adventures 8 years after the last episode.

In 2013, Kane appeared as JT Maxwell, brother to Rebecca Romijn's female lead Michelle Maxwell on TNT's King & Maxwell. He appeared again with Romijn co-starring in the 2014 to 2018 TNT television series The Librarians, based on The Librarian film series.

In 2020, Kane starred as Alex Walker on the drama series, Almost Paradise. The second season was released in July 2023. In an interview with Tell-Tale TV, Kane described that character as being several of his previous roles on other series rolled into one.

Music
In 1997, Kane met Steve Carlson, who had taken over his old job. They started writing songs together, and in 1998 formed the Southern rock band Kane. They have toured the U.S., as well as England and Germany. The band has self-released two albums, their self-titled debut, Kane, in 2002, and a recording of a live acoustic set, Acoustic Live In London! in 2004.

The band consists of Kane (lead vocals, guitar), Carlson (rhythm guitar, backing vocals), Jason Southard (lead guitar), Will Amend (bass guitar), and Ryan Baker (drums) and is signed to independent record label Bigger Picture Music Group. Their label debut, The House Rules, was released December 7, 2010. It debuted at no. 1 on the Billboard Heatseekers album chart and no. 25 on the Country Albums chart. The album was produced by Bob Ezrin and Jimmie Lee Sloas.

The first single from the album, also titled "The House Rules", debuted at no. 54 on the Billboard Country Songs chart and was the seventh-most added song on Mediabase Country stations on its official impact date. The video for the single was directed by Timothy Hutton and premiered on CMT's Big New Music Weekend October 1, 2010. "The House Rules" was featured in the video game NASCAR 09. The second single, "Let Me Go", was released on July 11, 2011. The video for the single, directed by Roman White, premiered on CMT August 8, 2011 and reached no. 1 on their Today's Top Videos chart.

Kane is also signed to a songwriting deal with EMI Music Publishing and writes much of his own material. Trace Adkins released a song written by Kane called "Happy Man" on his 2010 album, Cowboy's Back in Town.

Kane's co-writing efforts include songs written with Blair Daly, Brett James, David Lee Murphy, Casey Beathard, and Jerrod Niemann. "Thinking of You", a song he co-wrote with Blair Daly, was featured in Leverage Season 3 episode, "The Studio Job."

title: Christian Kane


text:
Stokely Carmichael

Kwame Ture (born Stokely Standiford Churchill Carmichael; June 29, 1941 – November 15, 1998) was an American activist who played a major role in the civil rights movement in the United States and the global pan-African movement. Born in Trinidad in the Caribbean, he grew up in the United States from the age of 11 and became an activist while attending the Bronx High School of Science. He was a key leader in the development of the Black Power movement, first while leading the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), then as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party, and last 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. He became a major voting rights activist in Mississippi and Alabama after being mentored by Ella Baker and Bob Moses. Like most young people in the SNCC, he 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. Carmichael eventually decided to develop independent all-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, he 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. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover secretly identified Carmichael as the man most likely to succeed Malcolm X as America's "black messiah". The FBI targeted him for counterintelligence activity through its COINTELPRO program, causing Carmichael to move to Africa in 1968. He reestablished himself in Ghana, and then Guinea by 1969. There, he adopted the name Kwame Ture, and began campaigning internationally for revolutionary socialist pan-Africanism. Ture died of prostate cancer in 1998 at the age of 57.

Early years
Carmichael was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. He attended Tranquility School before moving to Harlem, New York City, in 1952 at the age of 11, to rejoin his parents. They had migrated to the United States when he was two, and he was raised by his grandmother and two aunts. He had three sisters.

His mother, Mabel R. Carmichael, was a stewardess for a steamship line. His father, Adolphus, was a carpenter who also worked as a taxi driver. The reunited Carmichaels eventually left Harlem to live in Van Nest in the East Bronx, at that time an aging neighborhood primarily of Jewish and Italian immigrants and descendants. According to a 1967 interview Carmichael gave to Life Magazine, he was the only black member of the Morris Park Dukes, a youth gang involved in alcohol and petty theft.

Carmichael attended the Bronx High School of Science in New York from 1956, being selected through high achievement on its standardized entrance examination. He was acquainted with fellow Bronx Science student Samuel R. Delany during his time there.

After graduation in 1960, Carmichael enrolled at Howard University, a historically black university in Washington, D.C. His professors included the poet Sterling Brown, Nathan Hare, and Toni Morrison, who was later awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Carmichael and fellow civil rights activist Tom Kahn helped to fund a five-day run of the Three Penny Opera, by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill:

"Tom Kahn—very shrewdly—had captured the position of Treasurer of the Liberal Arts Student Council and the infinitely charismatic and popular Carmichael as floor whip was good at lining up the votes. Before they knew what hit them the Student Council had become a patron of the arts, having voted to buy out the remaining performances. It was a classic win/win. Members of the Council got patronage packets of tickets for distribution to friends and constituents."

Carmichael's Washington, D.C., apartment on Euclid Street was a gathering place for his activist classmates. He graduated in 1964 with a degree in philosophy. Carmichael was offered a full graduate scholarship to Harvard University but turned it down.

At Howard, Carmichael joined the Nonviolent Action Group (NAG), the Howard campus affiliate of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Kahn introduced Carmichael and the other SNCC activists to Bayard Rustin, an African-American leader who became an influential adviser to SNCC. Inspired by the sit-in movement in the southern United States during college, Carmichael became more active in the Civil Rights Movement.

1961: Freedom Rides
In his first year at Howard, in 1961, Carmichael participated in the Freedom Rides that the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organized to desegregate the interstate buses and bus station restaurants along U.S. Route 40 between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., as they came under federal rather than state law. They had been segregated by custom. He was frequently arrested and spent time in jail. He was arrested so many times for his activism that he lost count, sometimes estimating 29 or 32. In 1998, he told the Washington Post that he thought the total was fewer than 36.

Along with eight other riders, on June 4, 1961, Carmichael traveled by train from New Orleans, Louisiana, to Jackson, Mississippi, to integrate the formerly "white" section on the train. Before getting on the train in New Orleans, they encountered white protesters blocking the way. Carmichael said, "They were shouting. Throwing cans and lit cigarettes at us. Spitting on us." Eventually, the group was able to board the train. When the group arrived in Jackson, Carmichael and the eight other riders entered a "white" cafeteria. They were charged with disturbing the peace, arrested, and taken to jail.

Eventually, Carmichael was transferred to the infamous Parchman Penitentiary in Sunflower County, Mississippi, along with other Freedom Riders. He gained notoriety as a witty and hard-nosed leader among the prisoners.

He served 49 days with other activists at Parchman. At 19, Carmichael was the youngest detainee in the summer of 1961. He spent 53 days at Parchman in a six-by-nine cell. He and his colleagues were allowed to shower only twice a week, were not allowed books or any other personal effects, and were at times placed in maximum security to isolate them.

Carmichael said of the Parchman Farm sheriff:

"The sheriff acted like he was scared of black folks and he came up with some beautiful things. One night he opened up all the windows, put on ten big fans and an air conditioner, and dropped the temperature to 38 degrees [Fahrenheit; 3 °C]. All we had on was T-shirts and shorts."

While being hurt on one occasion, Carmichael began singing to the guards, "I'm gonna tell God how you treat me", and the other prisoners joined in.

Carmichael kept the group's morale up in prison, often telling jokes with Steve Green and the other Freedom Riders, and making light of their situation. He knew their situation was serious:

"What with the range of ideology, religious belief, political commitment and background, age, and experience, something interesting was always going on. Because no matter our differences, this group had one thing in common, moral stubbornness. Whatever we believed, we really believed and were not at all shy about advancing. We were where we were only because of our willingness to affirm our beliefs even at the risk of physical injury. So it was never dull on death row."

In a 1964 interview with author Robert Penn Warren, Carmichael reflected on his motives for going on the rides:

"I thought I have to go because you've got to keep the issue alive, and you've got to show the Southerners that you're not gonna be scared off, as we've been scared off in the past. And no matter what they do, we're still gonna keep coming back."

Mississippi and Cambridge, Maryland
In 1964, Carmichael became a full-time field organizer for SNCC in Mississippi. He worked on the Greenwood voting rights project under Bob Moses. Throughout Freedom Summer, he worked with grassroots African American activists, including Fannie Lou Hamer, whom Carmichael named as one of his personal heroes. SNCC organizer Joann Gavin wrote that Hamer and Carmichael "understood one another as perhaps no one else could."

He also worked closely with Gloria Richardson, who led the SNCC chapter in Cambridge, Maryland. During a protest with Richardson in Maryland in June 1964, Carmichael was hit directly in a chemical gas attack by the National Guard and had to be hospitalized.

He soon became project director for Mississippi's 2nd congressional district, made up largely of the counties of the Mississippi Delta. At that time, most blacks in Mississippi had been disfranchised since the passage of a new constitution in 1890. The summer project was to prepare them to register to vote and conduct a parallel registration movement to demonstrate how much people wanted to vote. Grassroots activists organized the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), as the regular Democratic Party did not represent African Americans in the state. At the end of Freedom Summer, Carmichael went to the 1964 Democratic Convention in support of the MFDP, which sought to have its delegation seated. But the MFDP delegates were refused voting rights by the Democratic National Committee, which chose to seat the regular white Jim Crow delegation. Carmichael, along with many SNCC staff members, left the convention with a profound sense of disillusionment in the American political system, and what he later called "totalitarian liberal opinion". He said, "what the liberal really wants is to bring about change which will not in any way endanger his position".

Selma to Montgomery marches
Having developed an aversion to working with the Democratic Party after the 1964 convention, Carmichael decided to leave the MFDP. Instead, he began exploring SNCC projects in Alabama in 1965. During the period of the Selma to Montgomery marches, James Forman recruited him to participate in a "second front" to stage protests at the Alabama State Capitol in March 1965. Carmichael became disillusioned with the growing struggles between SNCC and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which opposed Forman's strategy. He thought SCLC was working with affiliated black churches to undercut it. He was also frustrated to be drawn again into nonviolent confrontations with police, which he no longer found empowering. After seeing protesters brutally beaten again, he collapsed from stress, and his colleagues urged him to leave the city.

Within a week, Carmichael returned to protesting, this time in Selma, to participate in the final march along Route 80 to the state capital. But on March 23, 1965, Carmichael and some in SNCC who were participating in the Selma to Montgomery march declined to complete the march, instead initiating a grassroots project in "Bloody Lowndes" County, along the march route, talking with local residents. This was a county known for white violence against blacks during this era, where SCLC and Martin Luther King Jr. had tried and failed to organize its black residents. From 1877 to 1950, Lowndes County had 14 documented lynchings of African Americans. Carmichael and the SNCC activists who accompanied him also struggled in Lowndes, as local residents were at first wary of their presence. But they later achieved greater success as a result of a partnership with local activist John Hulett and other local leaders.

Lowndes County Freedom Organization
In 1965, working as a SNCC activist in the black majority Lowndes County, Alabama, Carmichael helped increase the number of registered black voters from 70 to 2,600, being 300 more than the number of registered white voters. Black voters had essentially been disfranchised by Alabama's constitution, passed by white Democrats in 1901. After Congressional passage in August of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the federal government was authorized to oversee and enforce their rights. There was still tremendous resistance from wary residents, but an important breakthrough occurred when, while he was handing out voter registration material at a local school, two policemen confronted Carmichael and ordered him to leave. He refused and avoided arrest after challenging the two officers to do so. As word of this incident spread, Carmichael and the SNCC activists who stayed with him in Lowndes gained more respect from local residents and started working with Hulett and other local leaders. With the objective of registering African American voters, Carmichael, Hulett and their local allies formed the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO), a party that had the black panther as its mascot, over the white-dominated local Democratic Party, whose mascot was a white rooster. Since federal protection from violent voter suppression by the Ku Klux Klan and other white opponents was sporadic, most Lowndes County activists openly carried arms.

Despite Carmichael's role in forming the LCFO, Hulett served as the group's chairperson and became one of the first two African Americans whose voter registration was successfully processed in Lowndes County. Although black residents and voters outnumbered whites in Lowndes, their candidate lost the countywide election of 1965. In 1966, several LCFO candidates ran for office in the general election but lost. In 1970, the LCFO merged with the statewide Democratic Party, and former LCFO candidates, including Hulett, won their first offices in the county.

Chairman of SNCC and Black Power
Carmichael became chairman of SNCC in 1966, taking over from John Lewis, an activist who later was elected to Congress. James Meredith had initiated a solitary March Against Fear in early June of that year from Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi. He did not want the big civil rights organizations or leaders involved but was willing to have individual black men join him. On his second day out, Meredith was shot and wounded by a sniper and had to be hospitalized. Civil rights leaders vowed to finish the march in his name.

Carmichael joined King, Floyd McKissick, Cleveland Sellers and others to continue Meredith's march. He was arrested in Greenwood during the march. After his release, he gave his first "Black Power" speech at a rally that night, using the phrase to urge black pride and socioeconomic independence:

"It is a call for black people in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community. It is a call for black people to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations."

According to historian David J. Garrow, a few days after Carmichael spoke about Black Power at the rally during "Meredith March Against Fear", he told King: "Martin, I deliberately decided to raise this issue on the march in order to give it a national forum and force you to take a stand for Black Power." King responded, "I have been used before. One more time won't hurt."

While Black Power was not a new concept, Carmichael's speech brought it into the spotlight. It became a rallying cry for young African Americans across the country who were frustrated by slow progress in civil rights, even after federal legislation had been passed to strengthen the effort. Everywhere that Black Power spread, if accepted, Carmichael got credit. If it was condemned, he was held responsible and blamed. According to Carmichael, "Black Power meant black people coming together to form a political force and either electing representatives or forcing their representatives to speak to their needs [rather than relying on established parties]." Strongly influenced by the work of Frantz Fanon and his landmark book The Wretched of the Earth, along with others such as Malcolm X, Carmichael led SNCC to become more radical. The group focused on Black Power as its core goal and ideology.

During the controversial Atlanta Project in 1966, SNCC, under the local leadership of Bill Ware, engaged in a voter drive to promote the candidacy of Julian Bond from an Atlanta district for a seat in the Georgia State Legislature. Ware excluded Northern white SNCC members from working on this drive. Carmichael initially opposed this decision but changed his mind. At the urging of the Atlanta Project, the issue of white members in SNCC came up for a vote. Carmichael ultimately sided with those calling for the expulsion of whites. He said that whites should organize poor white southern communities, of which there were plenty, while SNCC focused on promoting African American self-reliance through Black Power.

Carmichael considered nonviolence a tactic, not a fundamental principle, which separated him from civil rights leaders such as King. He criticized civil rights leaders who called for the integration of African Americans into existing institutions of the middle-class mainstream.

"Now, several people have been upset because we've said that integration was irrelevant when initiated by blacks, and that in fact it was a subterfuge, an insidious subterfuge, for the maintenance of white supremacy. Now we maintain that in the past six years or so, this country has been feeding us a 'thalidomide drug of integration', and that some Negroes have been walking down a dream street talking about sitting next to white people; and that that does not begin to solve the problem; that when we went to Mississippi we did not go to sit next to Ross Barnett; we did not go to sit next to Jim Clark; we went to get them out of our way; and that people ought to understand that; that we were never fighting for the right to integrate, we were fighting against white supremacy. Now, then, in order to understand white supremacy we must dismiss the fallacious notion that white people can give anybody their freedom. No man can give anybody his freedom. A man is born free. You may enslave a man after he is born free, and that is in fact what this country does. It enslaves black people after they're born, so that the only acts that white people can do is to stop denying black people their freedom; that is, they must stop denying freedom. They never give it to anyone."

Carmichael wrote that "in order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none."

During Carmichael's leadership, SNCC continued to maintain a coalition with several white radical organizations, most notably Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). It encouraged the SDS to focus on militant anti-draft resistance. At an SDS-organized conference at UC Berkeley in October 1966, Carmichael challenged the white left to escalate their resistance to the military draft in a manner similar to the black movement. For a time in 1967, he considered an alliance with Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation, and generally supported IAF's work in Rochester's and Buffalo's black communities.

Vietnam
SNCC conducted its first actions against the military draft and the Vietnam War under Carmichael's leadership. He popularized the oft-repeated anti-draft slogan "Hell no, we won't go!" during this time.

Carmichael encouraged King to demand unconditional withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam, even as some King advisers cautioned him that such opposition might have an adverse effect on financial contributions to the SCLC. King preached one of his earliest speeches calling for unconditional withdrawal with Carmichael in the front row at his invitation. Carmichael privately took credit for pushing King toward anti-imperialism, and historians such as Peniel Joseph and Michael Eric Dyson agree.

Carmichael joined King in New York on April 15, 1967, to share his views with protesters on race related to the Vietnam War:

"The draft exemplifies as much as racism the totalitarianism which prevails in this nation in the disguise of consensus democracy. The President has conducted war in Vietnam without the consent of Congress or the American people, without the consent of anybody except maybe Lady Bird."

Stepping down as chair
In May 1967, Carmichael stepped down as chairman of SNCC and was replaced by H. Rap Brown. SNCC was a collective, working by group consensus rather than hierarchically; many members had become displeased with Carmichael's celebrity status. SNCC leaders had begun to refer to him as "Stokely Starmichael" and criticized his habit of making policy announcements independently, before achieving internal agreement. According to historian Clayborne Carson, Carmichael did not protest the transfer of power and was "eager to relinquish the chair". It is sometimes mistakenly reported that Carmichael left SNCC completely at this time and joined the Black Panther Party, but that did not occur until 1968. SNCC officially ended its relationship with Carmichael in August 1968; in a statement, Philip Hutchings wrote: "It has been apparent for some time that SNCC and Stokely Carmichael were moving in different directions."

Targeted by FBI COINTELPRO
During this period, Carmichael was targeted by a section of J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO (counter-intelligence program) that focused on black activists; the program promoted slander and violence against targets Hoover considered enemies of the US government. It attempted to discredit them and worse. Carmichael accepted the position of Honorary Prime Minister in the Black Panther Party, but also remained on the SNCC staff. He tried to forge a merger between the two organizations. A March 4, 1968, memo from Hoover states his fear of the rise of a Black Nationalist "messiah" and that Carmichael alone had the "necessary charisma to be a real threat in this way". In July 1968, Hoover stepped up his efforts to divide the black power movement. Declassified documents show he launched a plan to undermine the SNCC-Panther merger, as well as to "bad-jacket" Carmichael as a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent. Both efforts were largely successful: Carmichael was expelled from SNCC that year, and the Panthers began to denounce him, putting him at grave personal risk.

International activism
After stepping down as SNCC chair, Carmichael wrote the book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967) with Charles V. Hamilton. It is a first-person reflection on his experiences in SNCC and his dissatisfaction with the direction of the Civil Rights Movement in the late 1960s. Throughout the work he directly and indirectly criticizes the established leadership of the SCLC and NAACP for their tactics and results, often claiming that they were accepting symbols instead of change.

He promoted what he calls "political modernization." This idea included three major concepts: "1) questioning old values and institutions of the society; 2) searching for new and different forms of political structure to solve political and economic problems; and, 3) broadening the base of political participation to include more people in the decision-making process." By questioning "old values and institutions", Carmichael was referring not only to the established Black leadership of the time but also to the values and institutions of the nation as a whole. He criticized the emphasis on the American "middle-class." "The values," he said, "of that class are based on material aggrandizement, not the expansion of humanity." (40) Carmichael believed that blacks were being lured to enter the "middle-class" as a trap, in which they would be assimilated into the white world by turning their backs on others of their race who were still suffering. This assimilation, he thought, was an inherent indictment of blackness and validation of whiteness as the preferred state. He said, "Thus we reject the goal of assimilation into middle-class America because the values of that class are in themselves anti-humanist and because that class as a social force perpetuates racism."

Secondly, Carmichael discussed searching for different forms of political structure to solve political and economic problems. At the time, the established forms of political structure were the SCLC and the NAACP. These groups were religiously and academically based and focused on nonviolence and steady legal and legislative change within established U.S. systems and structures. Carmichael rejected that. He discusses the development of the Mississippi Freedom Democrats, the 1966 local election in Lowndes County, and the political history of Tuskegee, Alabama. He chose these examples as places where blacks changed the system by political and legal maneuvering within the system, but said they ultimately failed to achieve more than the bare minimum. In the process, he believed they reinforced the political and legal structures that perpetuated the racism they were fighting.

In response to these failures and to offer a way forward, Carmichael discusses the concept of coalition with regard to the Civil Rights Movement. The leadership of the movement had affirmed that anyone who truly believed in their cause was welcome to join and march. Carmichael offered a different vision. Influenced by Fanon's ideas in The Wretched of the Earth, wherein two groups were not "complementary" (could have no overlap) until they were mutually exclusive (were on an equal power footing economically, socially, politically, etc.), Carmichael said that U.S. blacks had to unite and build their power independent of the white structure, or they would never be able to build a coalition that would function for both parties, not just the dominant one. He said, "we want to establish the grounds on which we feel political coalitions can be viable." For this to happen, Carmichael argued that blacks had to address three myths regarding coalition: "that the interests of black people are identical with the interests of certain liberal, labor, or other reform groups"; that a viable coalition can be created between "the politically and economically secure and the politically and economically insecure"; and that a coalition can be "sustained on a moral, friendly, sentimental basis; by appeals to conscience." He believed that each of these myths showed the need for two groups to be mutually exclusive, and on relatively equal footing, to be in a viable coalition.

This philosophy, grounded in the independence literature of Africa and Latin America, became the basis for a great deal of Carmichael's work. He believed the Black Power Movement had to be developed outside the white power structure.

Carmichael also continued as a strong critic of the Vietnam War and imperialism in general. During this period, he traveled and lectured extensively throughout the world, visiting Guinea, North Vietnam, China, and Cuba. He became more clearly identified with the Black Panther Party as its "Honorary Prime Minister." During this period, he acted more as a speaker than an organizer, traveling throughout the country and internationally advocating for his vision of Black Power.

Carmichael lamented the 1967 execution of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, saying:

"The death of Che Guevara places a responsibility on all revolutionaries of the World to redouble their decision to fight on to the final defeat of Imperialism. That is why in essence Che Guevara is not dead, his ideas are with us."

Carmichael visited the United Kingdom in July 1967 to attend the Dialectics of Liberation conference. After recordings of his speeches were released by the organizers, the Institute of Phenomenological Studies, he was banned from reentering the United Kingdom. In August 1967, a Cuban government magazine reported that Carmichael met with Fidel Castro for three days and called it "the most educational, most interesting, and the best apprenticeship of [my] public life." Because relations with Cuba were prohibited at the time, after his return to the US, the government withdrew his passport. In December 1967, he traveled to France to attend an antiwar rally. There he was detained by police and ordered to leave the next day, but government officials eventually intervened and allowed him to stay.

1968 D.C. riots
Carmichael was present in Washington, D.C., on April 5, 1968, the night after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. He led a group through the streets, demanding that businesses close out of respect. He tried to prevent violence, but the situation escalated beyond his control. Due to his reputation as a provocateur, the news media blamed Carmichael for the ensuing violence as mobs rioted along U Street and other areas of black commercial development.

Carmichael held a press conference the next day at which he predicted mass racial violence in the streets. Since moving to Washington, he had been under nearly constant FBI surveillance. After the riots, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover instructed a team of agents to find evidence connecting Carmichael to them. He was also subjected to COINTELPRO's bad-jacketing technique. Huey P. Newton suggested Carmichael was a CIA agent, slander that led to Carmichael's break with the Panthers and his exile from the U.S. the following year.

1969–98: Travel to Africa
In 1968, he married Miriam Makeba, a noted singer from South Africa. They left the US for Guinea the next year. Carmichael became an aide to Guinean president Ahmed Sékou Touré, and a student of the exiled Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah. Makeba was appointed Guinea's delegate to the United Nations.

Break with the Black Panthers
Three months after his arrival in Guinea, in July 1969 Carmichael published a formal rejection of the Black Panthers, condemning them for not being separatist enough and for their "dogmatic party line favoring alliances with white radicals". The Panthers believed that white activists could help the movement, while Carmichael had come to agree with Malcolm X that white activists should organize their own communities before trying to lead black people.

Life in Guinea
Carmichael remained in Guinea after his separation from the Black Panther Party. He continued to travel, write, and speak in support of international leftist movements. In 1971 he published his collected essays in a second book, Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism. This book expounds an explicitly socialist Pan-African vision, which he retained for the rest of his life.

Carmichael changed his name to Kwame Ture in 1978 to honor Nkrumah and Touré, who had become his patrons. At the end of his life, friends called him by both names, "and he doesn't seem to mind".

In 1986, two years after Sékou Touré's death, the military regime that took his place arrested Carmichael for his association with Touré, and jailed him for three days on suspicion of attempting to overthrow the government. Although Touré was known for jailing and torturing his opponents (some 50,000 people are believed to have been killed under his regime) Carmichael had never publicly criticized the man he named himself after. From the late 1970s till his death, he answered his phone by announcing: "Ready for the revolution!"

American and British government interference
Carmichael's suspicions about CIA surveillance were confirmed in 2007 by declassified documents revealing that the agency had tracked him from 1968 as part of their surveillance of Black activists abroad. The surveillance continued for years.

Documents declassified in 2022 revealed that the Information Research Department (IRD) of the British Foreign Office, concerned by Carmichael's socialist and pan-Africanist views, created a fake organization that published literature critical of Carmichael. The IRD created "The Black Power – Africa's Heritage Group", supposedly based in West Africa, and via the organization disseminated a pamphlet portraying Carmichael "as a foreign interloper in Africa who was contemptuous of the inhabitants of the continent". The pamphlet, which said, "Enough is enough – why Stokely must go! – and do his thing elsewhere", alleged that Carmichael was controlled by Nkrumah and was "weaving a bloody trail of chaos in the name of Pan-Africanism".

All-African People's Revolutionary Party
For the final 30 years of his life, Kwame Ture was devoted to the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP). His mentor Nkrumah had many ideas for unifying the African continent, and Ture extended the scope of these ideas to the entire African diaspora. He was a Central Committee member during his association with the A-APRP and made many speeches on the party's behalf.

Ture did not simply study with Touré and Nkrumah. The latter had been designated honorary co-president of Guinea after he was deposed by the US-backed coup in Ghana. Ture worked overtly and covertly to "Take Nkrumah Back to Ghana" (according to the movement's slogan). He became a member of the Democratic Party of Guinea (PDG), the revolutionary ruling party. He sought Nkrumah's permission to launch the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP), which Nkrumah had called for in his book Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare. After several discussions, Nkrumah gave his blessing.

Ture was convinced that the A-APRP was needed as a permanent mass-based organization in all countries where people of African descent lived. For the last decades of his life, a period often ignored by popular media, Ture worked full-time as an organizer of the party. He spoke on its behalf on several continents, at college campuses, community centers, and other venues. He was instrumental in strengthening ties between the African/Black liberation movement and several revolutionary or progressive organizations, both African and non-African. Notable among them were the American Indian Movement (AIM) of the United States, New Jewel Movement (Grenada), National Joint Action Committee (NJAC) of Trinidad and Tobago, Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the Pan Africanist Congress (South Africa) and the Irish Republican Socialist Party.

Routinely, Ture was regarded as the leader of the A-APRP, but his only titles were "Organizer" and Central Committee member. Beginning in the mid-1970s, the A-APRP began each May to sponsor African Liberation Day (ALD), a continuation of the African Freedom Day Nkrumah began in 1958 in Ghana. Although the party was involved in or was primary or co-sponsor of other ALD annual observances, marches, and rallies around the world, the best-known and largest event was held annually in Washington, D.C, usually at Meridian Hill Park (also known as Malcolm X Park) at 16th and W Streets, NW.

Lecturing in the Caribbean and the United States
While making his home in Guinea, Ture traveled frequently. In the last quarter of the 20th century, he became the world's most active and prominent exponent of pan-Africanism, defined by Nkrumah and the A-APRP as "The Liberation and Unification of Africa Under Scientific Socialism".

Ture often returned to speak to audiences of thousands (including students and townspeople) at his alma mater, Howard University, and other campuses. The Party worked to recruit students and other youth, and Ture hoped to attract them with his speeches. He also worked to raise the political consciousness of African/Black people in general. He formed the A-APRP with the initial goal of putting "Africa" on the lips of Black people throughout the diaspora, knowing that many did not consciously or positively relate to their ancestral homeland. Ture was convinced that the party significantly raised international black "consciousness" of Pan-Africanism. The government of Trinidad and Tobago barred him from lecturing in the country for fear that he would cause disturbances among black Trinidadians.

Under his leadership, the A-APRP organized the All African Women's Revolutionary Union and the Sammy Younge Jr. Brigade (named after the first black college student to die during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement) as component organizations.

Ture and Cuban president Fidel Castro admired each other, sharing a common opposition to imperialism. In Ture's final letter, he wrote:

"It was Fidel Castro who before the OLAS (Organization of Latin American States) Conference said 'if imperialism touches one grain of hair on his head, we shall not let the fact pass without retaliation.' It was he, who on his own behalf, asked them all to stay in contact with me when I returned to the United States to offer me protection."

Ture was ill when he gave his final speech at Howard University. A standing-room-only crowd in Rankin Chapel paid tribute to him, and he spoke boldly, as usual. A small group of student leaders from Howard and a former Party member traveled to Harlem (Sugar Hill) in New York City to bid Ture farewell shortly before his final return to Guinea. Also present that evening were Kathleen Cleaver and another Black Panther, Dhoruba bin Wahad. Ture was in good spirits though in pain. The group included men and women born in Africa, South America, the Caribbean, as well as the USA.

Illness and death
After his diagnosis of prostate cancer in 1996, Ture was treated for a period in Cuba, while receiving some support from the Nation of Islam. Benefit concerts for Ture were held in Denver, New York, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C., to help defray his medical expenses. The government of Trinidad and Tobago, where he was born, awarded him a grant of $1,000 a month for the same purpose. He went to New York, where he was treated for two years at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, before returning to Guinea.

In a final interview given in April 1998 to The Washington Post, Ture criticized the limited economic and electoral progress made by African Americans in the U.S. during the previous 30 years. He acknowledged that Black people had won election to the mayor's office in major cities, but said that, as the mayors' power had generally diminished over earlier decades, such progress was essentially meaningless.

In 1998, Ture died of prostate cancer at the age of 57 in Conakry, Guinea. He had said that his cancer "was given to me by forces of American imperialism and others who conspired with them." He claimed that the FBI had infected him with cancer in an assassination attempt.

The civil rights leader Jesse Jackson spoke in celebration of Ture's life, saying: "He was one of our generation who was determined to give his life to transforming America and Africa. He was committed to ending racial apartheid in our country. He helped to bring those walls down". NAACP Chair Julian Bond said that Carmichael "ought to be remembered for having spent almost every moment of his adult life trying to advance the cause of black liberation."

Carmichael's marriages and divorces
Ture married singer Miriam Makeba from South Africa in the U.S. in 1968. They divorced in Guinea after separating in 1973.

Later he married Marlyatou Barry, a Guinean doctor. They divorced sometime after having a son, Bokar, in 1981. By 1998, Marlyatou Barry and Bokar were living in Arlington County, Virginia, near Washington, D.C. Using a statement from the All-African People's Revolutionary Party as a reference, Ture's 1998 obituary in The New York Times said he was survived by two sons, Bokar Biro Ture and Alpha Yaya Ture; three sisters; and his mother.

Legacy
Ture, along with Charles V. Hamilton, is credited with coining the phrase "institutional racism", defined as racism that occurs through institutions such as public bodies and corporations, including universities. In the late 1960s Ture defined "institutional racism" as "the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their color, culture or ethnic origin".

In his book on King, David J. Garrow criticizes Ture's handling of the Black Power movement as "more destructive than constructive". Garrow describes the period in 1966 when Ture and other SNCC members managed to register 2,600 African American voters in Lowndes County as the most consequential period in Ture's life "in terms of real, positive, tangible influence on people's lives". Evaluations by Ture's associates are also mixed, with most praising his efforts and others criticizing him for failing to find constructive ways to achieve his objectives. SNCC's final chair, Phil Hutchings, who expelled Ture over a dispute about the Black Panther Party, wrote: "Even though we kidded and called him 'Starmichael', he could sublimate his ego to get done what was needed to be done....He would say what he thought, and you could disagree with it but you wouldn't cease being a human being and someone with whom he wanted to be in relationship." Washington Post staff writer Paula Span described Carmichael as someone who was rarely hesitant to push his own ideology. Tufts University historian Peniel Joseph's biography, Stokely: A Life, says that Black Power activist Ruby Doris Smith Robinson, the first to call him as "Stokely Starmichael," gave him the nickname in protest of his growing ego and that other SNCC staff shared her view.

Joseph credits Ture with expanding the parameters of the civil rights movement, asserting that his black power strategy "didn't disrupt the civil rights movement. It spoke truth to power to what so many millions of young people were feeling. It actually cast a light on people who were in prisons, people who were welfare rights activists, tenants' rights activists, and also in the international arena." Tavis Smiley calls Ture "one of the most underappreciated, misunderstood, undervalued personalities this country's ever produced".

In 2002, the American-born scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Ture as one of his 100 Greatest African Americans.

Ture is also remembered for his actions in James Meredith's March Against Fear in June 1966, when he issued the call for Black Power. When Meredith got shot, Carmichael came up with the phrase and gathered a crowd to chant it in Greenwood, Mississippi. Already, earlier that day, he had been arrested for the 27th time; he spoke to over 3,000 people that day in the park. Ture was angry that day because black people had been "chanting" freedom for almost six years with no results, so he wanted to change the chant. He also participated in and contributed to the Black Freedom Struggle. Many people have overlooked his involvement in the movement. He never switched from left to right in his politics as he got older, and his trajectory both marked and influenced the course of black militancy in the United States. The outrage that most affected him was King's assassination.

Views on Adolf Hitler
Although he stated in his posthumously published memoirs that he had never been anti-semitic, in 1970 Carmichael proclaimed: "I have never admired a white man, but the greatest of them, to my mind, was Hitler." However, Carmichael in the same speech condemned Hitler on moral grounds, Carmichael himself stating:

"Adolph Hitler—I'm not putting a judgment on what he did—if you asked me for my judgment morally, I would say it was bad, what he did was wrong, was evil, etc. But I would say he was a genius, nevertheless ... You say he's not a genius because he committed bad acts. That's not the question. The question is, he does have genius. Now when we condemn him morally or ethically, we will say, well, he was absolutely wrong, he should be killed, he should be murdered, etc., etc. ... But if we're judging his genius objectively, we have to admit that the man was a genius. He forced the entire world to fight him. He was fighting America, France, Britain, Russia, Italy once— then they switched sides—all of them at the same time, and whipping them. That's a genius, you cannot deny that."

Views on women
In November 1964 Carmichael made a joking remark in response to a SNCC position paper written by his friends Casey Hayden and Mary E. King on the position of women in the movement. In the course of an irreverent comedy monologue he performed at a party after SNCC's Waveland conference, Carmichael said, "The position of women in the movement is prone." A number of women were offended. In a 2006 The Chronicle of Higher Education article, historian Peniel E. Joseph later wrote:

"While the remark was made in jest during a 1964 conference, Carmichael and black-power activists did embrace an aggressive vision of manhood—one centered on black men's ability to deploy authority, punishment, and power. In that, they generally reflected their wider society's blinders about women and politics."

Carmichael's colleague, John Lewis, stated in his autobiography, March, that the comment was a joke, uttered as Carmichael and other SNCC officials were "blowing off steam" following the adjournment of a meeting at a staff retreat in Waveland, Mississippi. When asked about the comment, former SNCC field secretary Casey Hayden stated: "Our paper on the position of women came up, and Stokely in his hipster rap comedic way joked that 'the proper position of women in SNCC is prone'. I laughed, he laughed, we all laughed. Stokely was a friend of mine." In her memoir, Mary E. King wrote that Carmichael was "poking fun at his own attitudes" and that "Casey and I felt, and continue to feel, that Stokely was one of the most responsive men at the time that our anonymous paper appeared in 1964."

Carmichael appointed several women to posts as project directors during his tenure as chairman of SNCC; by the latter half of the 1960s (considered to be the "Black Power era"), more women were in charge of SNCC projects than during the first half.

Film

 * In Spike Lee's 2018 film BlacKkKlansman, Kwame Ture is portrayed by Corey Hawkins.
 * In Mario Van Peebles's 1995 film Panther based on Melvin Van Peebles's screenplay, Stokely Carmichael is portrayed by Mario Van Peebles.

Exhibition

 * In 2018 a national tribute  'the fight of a lifetime'  is dedicated to him during a one-month exhibition at the Gamal Abdel Nasser University of Conakry.

Music

 * Carmichael's speeches have been sampled by composer and DJ Hideki Naganuma.

Stage

 * Nambi E. Kelley's play Stokely: The Unfinished Revolution premiered at the Court Theatre in Chicago in May 2024. Anthony Irons portrayed Carmichael.

Works

 * Stokely Speaks: From Black Power to Pan-Africanism (1965), ISBN 978-1-55652-649-7
 * Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967), ISBN 0679743138
 * Black Power (1968), Liberation Records DL-6
 * Free Huey! (1970), Black Forum/Motown Records BF-452 (reissued in 2022 as Black Forum/Motown/UMe/Universal 456 139)
 * Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) (2005), ISBN 978-0684850047

Research resources

 * Stokely Carmichael-Lorna D. Smith Collection, 1964–1972 (5 linear ft.) is housed in the Department of Special Collections and University Archives at Stanford University Libraries

Videos

 * Montgomey Interview video at The Jack Rabin Collection of Alabama Civil Rights and Southern Activists Stokely Carmichael
 * Kwame Ture on Zionism
 * February 17, 1968 on PBS.org
 * Consciousness and Unconsciousness
 * With H. Rap Brown, Oakland, 1968 (longer version of PBS clip)
 * From Protest to Resistance: A Critical Look at the New Left. A 1968 TV movie with interviews and footage of Carmichael's speeches, made by Saul Landau
 * University of Nebraska Omaha, 1993
 * Eyes on the Prize interview (1986) in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting
 * Kwame Ture Speaks at Houston Universities - The KHOU-TV Collection (1967) from TexasArchive.org
 * Kwame Ture Speaks at Houston Universities - The KHOU-TV Collection (1967) from TexasArchive.org

title: Stokely Carmichael