Revolution in Babylon: Stokely Carmichael and America in the 1960s

Stokely Carmichael fundamentally transformed American race relations in the
1960s as a local organizer, national political mobilizer, and international icon.
In doing so Carmichael both scandalized and helped to reshape American
democracy, first as a local organizer in Washington, D.C.; the Mississippi Delta;
and Lowndes County, Alabama and then as SNCC chairman and a Black Power
advocate. This essay argues that the boundaries between the civil rights and Black Power eras have been too sharply drawn at the expense of a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of both periods. Civil rights and Black Power are rooted in distinct, yet overlapping origins that share a common history. Carmichael’s evolution from a civil rights militant to Black Power revolutionary uncovers buried intimacies between the two eras while providing eye-opening new details about radical efforts to transform American democracy in the 1960s.