Clinton's comments about Ture leave many angry

COMMENTS by a former US president regarding Trinidad-born Stokely Carmichael (later renamed Kwame Ture) at the recent funeral of former US civil-rights leader and politician, John Lewis, are not sitting well with many social media users.

In 1966, Carmichael replaced Lewis as chairman of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). At Lewis’ funeral, which was aired live on several sites, former US president Bill Clinton said, "And I say there were two or three years there, where the movement went a little too far towards Stokely, but in the end, John Lewis prevailed."

An article in Jacobin magazine by Amandla Thomas-Johnson said Clinton’s attempt to play Lewis and Carmichael off each other, pitting civil rights against Black Power, sits within a long tradition of moderate whites seeking to limit the political imaginations of black Americans.

"That Clinton should use a nationally televised event — the funeral of one of America’s most enduring black figures no less — to disparage Carmichael is a disgrace," Thomas-Johnson said.

"But we can also assume it was no mistake: his remarks were likely delivered with the upcoming presidential election and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in mind."

Carmichael grew up in New York and entered the civil rights fray in the early 1960s as an eloquent and erudite organiser with SNCC, the article said. He was arrested more than two dozen times. Carmichael formed the Lowndes County Freedom Organisation in Alabama, an independent black political party.

"Radicalised by his political experience, Stokely in 1966 proclaimed himself a proponent of Black Power," Thomas-Johnson said. "Within a few years, Black Power movements would crop up in the US and across the world, from India to New Zealand to the Caribbean."

Thomas-Johnson is a journalist based in Dakar, Senegal. In 1969, after a brief stint as honorary prime minister of the Black Panther Party, Carmichael moved to Guinea, West Africa. There he was mentored by anti-colonial leaders Kwame Nkrumah and Ahmed Sékou Touré.

"Later, he would emerge as a major Pan-African figure in his own right, serving as leader of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party and taking the name Kwame Ture." The civil rights icons remained friends until Carmichael’s death in Guinea in November 1998 at 57. The article said there is an unmistakable chord linking Black Power to BLM.

BLM’s demands to dismantle the police and the prison industrial complex owe much to Carmichael and Black Power, taking the fight to institutional racism.

"Like Stokely, BLM activists have been radicalised by racist policing and discriminatory laws," the article said. "Like SNCC, BLM has internationalised its struggle, providing inspiration for similar movements from Britain to France to Australia."

ABC News YouTube’s channel, like other media companies, aired the funeral of the 80-year-old who died on July 17. Many people expressed their displeasure, some commenting that Clinton dissed Carmichael. Many other famous politicians, including former US presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, also spoke at the funeral.