Monday, September 30, 2013

Askia Toure confirmed for Black Arts Movement Conference at UC Merced, March 1-2, 2014




Peace, Bro. Marvin X,

I've just seen the Outline for the forthcoming Black Arts/Black Power Conference. I would like to make a suggestion: I would like to be included on the Black Power Section of the Program, due to the fact that I infiltrated SNCC and introduced Black Power into the Southern Civil Rights mass movement. When I was a member of SNCC's Atlanta Project, I co-wrote the 1966 SNCC Black Power Position Paper, with Atlanta Project leader, William Bill Ware, and Black SNCC activist-writer, Donald Stone. This paper influenced Stokely Carmichael, and it was published in the New York Times. After the Paper was circulated throughout the Southern SNCC chapters, where it was fiercely debated, it grew to become more or less the "official" position of Carmichael's tenure as director of Black Power SNCC, which deposed integrationist SNCC. Marvin, this proved historically important, because until then, "Black Power" was considered a "Northern" position, while the South was "integrationist." I'm not so sure that many Black Power activists in the North are even aware of this historical event. Muhammad Ahmed & I also taught Black Power/Black His-tory in the SNCC "Freedom Schools," in Mississippi, and in Atlanta, in 1967, where I developed an Atlanta "Freedom School," before being invited by SNCC's Jimmy Garrett and Sis. Sonia to come work with the Black Power/Black Studies project in San Francisco. 

Yours in Struggle, Askia Toure'.

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