The Black Panther Party gained prominence after its establishment particularly due to the organization’s ideologies and modus operandi. In a 1967 interview, Stokely “Kwame Ture” Carmichael explained how the organization was going to revolutionize the Civil Rights Movement.
A pioneer in the Black Power Movement, Ture was then a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and a member of the Black Panther Movement.
“This is the first time in the country that negroes will be organized for their own political interest and they will form their own party and move along those interests as they see fit,” he said about the party. “It is unlike negroes across the country who are registered in the Democratic Party but are not organized for their own interest.”
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Asked if being a member of the SNCC as well the Black Panther Party was conflicting, particularly due to the fact that the latter embraced violence and counter-violence as a necessary by-product of revolution, Ture said:
“They won’t contribute to violence, they will just be seeking their political rights and they will have to defend those rights. Now they will defend it the way the country defends its own rights; the way we defended in Vietnam, the way we defended it in World War II, the way we defended in World War I, the way they were gonna defend it in Dominican Republic. I imagine they will defend it the same way, violently.”
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