Mississippi is a place where the late Kwame Ture spent time in the 1960’s helping to enfranchise the black community at a time when black voters faced harassment and terror at the voting booths. As leader of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), he was often jailed and beaten by the police for these efforts. He left SNCC to join the Black Panther Party, and later led the All African People’s Revolutionary Party, which was founded by Ghanaian president and independence leader Kwame Nkrumah.

Together with other prominent black leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, he was targeted for surveillance by the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program. Today we broadcast a 1992 speech in which he addressed how the CIA and FBI have engaged in terror tactics against liberation struggles both at home and abroad.

Tape:

• Kwame Ture, lifelong activist, formerly known as Stokely Carmichael, was a leader in SNCC, the Black Panther Party, and later the All African People’s Revolutionary Party. He died last November in his home in Guinea-Conakry.