Kwame Ture’s insistence that the power behind racism and sexism comes from capitalism, not from attitudes, cuts against one of the most common ways oppression is explained. It is often treated as a matter of personal prejudice, to be fixed through better feelings, diversity training, or changed hearts. For Ture, attitudes were not the root of the problem but its expression. Racism and sexism endure because they are built into the economic system and serve it, dividing working people, justifying exploitation, and keeping wealth and power in the hands of a few.

Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, in 1941 and raised in the Bronx, Stokely Carmichael joined the Freedom Rides as a student at Howard University. He was jailed in Mississippi’s Parchman prison, and he organized with SNCC across the Deep South. In Lowndes County, Alabama, he helped build the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, whose black panther symbol later inspired the Black Panther Party. In 1966, as chairman of SNCC, he raised the call for Black Power. His book Black Power, written with Charles Hamilton, introduced the concept of institutional racism and showed how racism operates through institutions and systems, not just individual acts of bigotry.

Ture’s politics grew steadily toward revolutionary Pan-Africanism and socialism. In 1969 he moved to Guinea, took the name Kwame Ture in honor of Kwame Nkrumah and Ahmed Sékou Touré, and spent the rest of his life organizing for the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party, greeting comrades with the words “Ready for the revolution!” He died in 1998. His words remind us that changing attitudes is not enough. Ending racism and sexism means ending the system that profits from them.

• 1 print shipped in a rigid mailer (made from recycled cardstock)
• printed on acid-free, premium matte-photo paper

• paper weight + thickness: 250/m² / 66lbs 

*frame not included*