Ready for Revolution: the Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture).

Ready for revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) By Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) Scribner: 848 pages. $35

In 1971, a contemporary supporter of the fiery orator and civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael described him as "one of the most loved, hated, respected, feared, and misunderstood black men of our generation." Carmichael's autobiography comes five years after his death of prostate cancer. His friend Ekwueme Michael Thelwell edited the many tape-recorded collections that Carmichael left.

Carmichael (who later in life moved to Africa and took the name Kwame Ture) served as a key transitional figure in the U.S. civil rights movement of the 1960s. He paid his dues as the youngest of the Freedom Riders jailed in Mississippi's infamous Parchman Penitentiary and as a tireless leader of 1964's Freedom Summer. Carmichael went on to chair the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and to champion the rhetoric of "Black Power."

By suggesting that this new militant posture was a natural and inevitable stance for the movement, Ready for Revolution downplays the originality of Carmichael's analysis and allows him to avoid responsibility for its consequences on the organization he led. Nevertheless, the book offers a valuable inside perspective on civil rights organizing and documents one activist's lifelong commitment to fighting racism.