BY DANA DiFILIPPO
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Marian Spencer first heard Stokely Carmichael speak nearly 30 years ago.
It was a rousing speech at the Carmel Presbyterian Church in Avondale, and Mrs. Spencer left energized - until she saw several Cincinnati police officers staking out a nearby parking lot, expecting a riot.
"I told them: 'You all should have been inside listening,' " remembered Mrs. Spencer, a former Cincinnati City councilwoman and desegregation activist. "He was talking about problems we deal with every day, and he was talking about solutions.
"But not enough has changed. With the kids at Miami (University) as upset as they are, we know there still is unrest in our country," she said, referring to recent protests of racism there.
"Among young people, the question remains: How do we face these problems and how do we get the attention of people in power short of something that's riotous?"
Like Mrs. Spencer, many civil rights leaders in Cincinnati greeted news of Mr. Carmichael's death with frustration that the militant black leader's message remains as necessary today as when he first coined the phrase "Black Power!"
Mr. Carmichael, also known as Kwame Ture, spoke several times in Cincinnati since the 1960s, including stops at the University of Cincinnati, Xavier University and other sites.
"Kwame Ture was one of the young Turks during the 1960s who came forth with a belligerence, an attitude, a desire to shake off the shackles and move forward," said Milton Hinton, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Cincinnati branch.
"It takes many and varied approaches to achieve an end, and his approach was necessary because there were some people in the power structure who would not pay attention to the NAACP."
Not all local leaders were convinced by his message.
"His movement toward the direction of angry black power was inconsistent with the leadership direction of the most successful African-American leaders of the 20th century, who wrapped their rhetoric and language in the context of American idealism, which in the long term, works much better," said City Councilman Tyrone Yates, an adjunct associate professor of political science at UC who teaches a course called "Twentieth Century Black Leadership."
"He is a polarizer of the first order, and frankly, not one of my heroes."
But Steven Reece, a Monfort Heights resident active nationally with the Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow - PUSH Coalition, said Mr. Carmichael's emphasis on economic empowerment, the need for leadership and the importance of voting remains pertinent in the black community today.
"We cannot just go to sleep and stop pushing for all the things we talked about during the civil rights movement" of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, he said.
