Bad Boy to Black Power: The Revolutionary Struggles of Kwame Ture

Abstract

Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) was born on 29 June 1941 at 54 Oxford Street in Port-of-Spain in Trinidad and Tobago. He attended Ms. Stafford’s private school, Eastern Boys’ Government School and in 1951, he began Tranquility Boys Government Intermediate School.¹ At the age of 11, he migrated with his parents to the USA in June 1952. He showed great promise, “As a child he was quiet and unassuming, often acting wise beyond his years.”² Evidence of this is his reaction at nine years of age when he entered a polling station, “on the corner of Belmont and Observatory Street, and declared to the returning officer, “I come to vote, for Uriah ‘Tubal’ Butler, and his Citizens Empire and Home Rule Party.”³ Elaine Letrin, one of Ture’s three paternal aunts, was a member of Butler’s Party and vice president of the Clerical Workers Union.⁴ She must be credited and thanked for Kwame’s early entry into politics and revolutionary politics.