“A Conspiracy of the Nation”: Case Study of Stokely Carmichael’s and H. Rap Brown’s Arguments in Support of Black Power

Conspiracy Argument as Rhetorical Force

As a catalyst of conspiracy, representatives of marginalized social interests detail en masse the malfeasances of establishment forces, which are directly linked to the community’s suffering (Creps, 1980). Conspiracy rhetors reiterate that the establishment is all-powerful and will not surrender its authority voluntarily (Bowers et al., 2010). Furthermore, “the enemy is held to possess some especially effective source of power: he controls the press; he has unlimited funds; he has a new secret for influencing the mind (brainwashing); he has a special technique for seduction” (Hofstadter, 1964, p. 85). By extension, “while conspiracy rhetoric urges us to question everything,” according to Neville-Shepard (2018) the sub-textual form of conspiracy argument urges us “to question everyone, especially those in power.” Conspiracy argument then purifies the community in “shifting blame from the polis to the plot” and assuring adherents their troubles are not a result of personal wrongdoing as conventional knowledge has led them to believe (Creps, 1980, p. 36). Deliberately distorted messages from the establishment in the form of historical teachings and socially transmitted values comprise a grand oppressive scheme. Speakers attempt to raise the awareness of a once oblivious cohort, “personifying the causes of events” and “providing a clear-cut enemy against whom the community can direct its ire.” Finally, conspiracy argument implies “that the community could attain a utopian future” once it purges all conspiratorial parties, inherently urging action and justifying dissent with allusions to the wrongdoings of collusive factions (Creps, 1980, p. 32). If the argument is successful, it may upend the “formerly consensually derived reality” (Goodnight & Poulakos, 1981, p. 302).

Admittedly, Hofstadter’s pejorative and simplistic characterization (“paranoid”) connotes an “objectionable manifestation of aberrant practices” (Fenster, 2008, p. 23). However, it does us little use empirically to simply dismiss all declarations of collusion as fanatical or psychopathological (see Bale, 2007). Doing so disregards the power of conspiracy argument to promote effective political action on the part of adherents, and ignores key characteristics of a social context that first called the theory into being (Hasian, 1997; Waters, 1997). Furthermore, as Waters (1997) points out, “treating conspiracy theories as invariably mistaken is unrealistic in societies where concerted and secretly planned social action is an everyday accomplishment of industries and government agencies” (p. 122). Critiques should focus on the practical functions of conspiracy argument, unique in their “burden to prove the existences of machinations that necessarily are difficult or impossible to perceive,” and the potential consequences of its resonance or dissonance with public opinion (Pfau, 2005, p. 58).

From Conspiracy Speech to Militant Action

Young (1974, p. 120) argues that assertions of conspiracy bode well with extremist rhetoric. Revolutionary radicalism

proposes to supplant [existing institutions] with an infinitely more just and benign way of life . . . by subversion and violence . . . to disrupt this process as quickly and completely as possible in defiance of all rules of the game. (Rossiter, 1956, p. 11)

Because radical ideologists believe societal institutions to be “dissembling and dishonest,” they “preclude the possibility of dealing with the conspirators through the political process or by political bargaining” (Rossiter, 1956; Young, 1974, p. 19). Just as Zarefsky (1984) argues conspiracy theories become “generally accepted in times of social strain” (p. 73), the immediate environment in which the Black Power movement emerged—colored by historical racial contention—furnished invitation of revolutionary thought and consequently, conspiracy speech. Conspiracy speech affords “informal networks of communication for those who do not feel they can trust the status quo” (Hasian, 1997, p. 198). Furthermore, feelings of victimization, discrimination, and powerlessness correlate with belief in conspiracy theories (Parsons et al., 1998). The history of Black Americans “as a nation within a nation” left most “with a deep sense of alienation from the society of their birth and an intense longing for full and equal citizenship” (Isserman & Kazin, 2012, p. 23). They were ostracized through “legal subterfuge and open terror” from participation in American democracy and incapacitated as a result (p. 127). It is not that interests of Black Americans were totally irreconcilable with those of White Americans, as evidenced by an early emphasis on the attainment of equal rights and integration. Rather, the physical and psychological resistance with which the Black community met led many to perceive liberal efforts as futile, setting the stage for an ideological shift from integration and nonviolent resistance to militant defense of Black self-determination.

Molding the “Negro” Mentality

Disproportionate distributions of social power afford established, or “dominant,” agencies the “ability to name and to define what is correct in society, to define the nature of authority, to outline the rules of society, and to specify the terms under which members of society must obey those rules” (Bowers et al., 2010; see Bracey, 2015). Per Carmichael, “Black people are not in a depressed condition because of some defect of their character.” Rather, “institutional racism relies on the active and pervasive operation of antiblack attitudes and practices” through language control (Ture & Hamilton 1967, p. 21). “White western society has been able to define everybody,” Carmichael (1967) argued. “And when they’re defined, they can’t get out of those definitions” (para. 20). “We must understand,” writes Brown (1969), “the many ways in which the white man brainwashes people into acting and thinking like he wants them to so that he can continue to control them” (Chapter 2, para. 11). “In and of itself color has no meaning. But the white world has given it meaning—political, social, economic, historical, physiological and philosophical. Once color has been given meaning, an order is thereby established” (Brown 1969, Chapter 1, para. 6). Brown lectured a crowd in Cambridge:

You’ve been told all your life if you’re black . . . there’s something wrong with you. They tell you black cows don’t give good milk; black hens don’t lay eggs. Devil’s food cake . . . you put on black to go to funerals. When you put on white you go to weddings. They talk about flesh-colored band-aids. You ain’t never seen a black-flesh-colored band-aid. (Peskin & Almes, 1967, p. 1)

In addition, media outlets including televised news and “every other journal . . . that [was] published by top people in America [was] controlled by the government,” itself a corrupt entity, making media a “weapon against people” (Brown, 1967/1975). The SNCC chairmen’s explanations signaled rationalization of Black subordination was not only a deliberate stratagem, it had been operative for centuries. Where racist individuals had effectively tarnished the image of Black Americans, prejudice and discrimination have prevailed. And where they had “succeeded” in converting the minds of Black Americans “negroes have been created” (Brown, 1969, Intro, para. 1).

Brown, through his use of pro-Black lexicon, distinguished loyal constituents of the Black movement from “negroes” and “Uncle Toms” who feigned advocacy or remained apathetic to appease America at large. “If one examines the structure of this country closely,” Brown explained, “he will note that there are three basic categories: they are white america, negro america, and Black america,” the latter of which constitutes genuine advocacy for the rights of Black citizens (Brown, 1969, Chapter 1, para. 4). In his autobiography, he wrote, “[t]o be Black in this country is . . . to resist both white and negro death. . . . It is the spirit of resistance which has prepared Blacks for the ultimate struggle” (Brown, 1969, Intro, para. 7). Carmichael chastened a Seattle crowd warning that in identification with and usage of the term “negro,” “you have allowed white people to name you,” recalling the connotative, powerless, slave-era interpretation of people considered “stupid [and] apathetic, [who] love watermelon, and got good rhythm” (Carmichael, 1967, para. 29; Stewart, 1997). Brown distanced Black Power advocates by describing “negro [america], being unable to recognize . . . the true enemy” as a dangerous adversary of Black Power and progress (Brown, 1969, Intro, para. 6; Peskin & Almes, 1967). This reconnaissance tactic represents one of the establishment’s greatest sources of influence in conspiracy rhetoric, for often “the enemy of the conspiratorially-minded” resembles in-group members (Goodnight & Poulakos, 1981, p. 310). In his autobiography, Brown further delineated characteristics of “Blacks” and “negroes,” accusing the latter group of acquiescence to a system of oppression (Peskin & Almes, 1967). He writes, they

fear that if they called themselves Blacks, they might antagonize whites [a]nd . . . lose their position as negroes—the white-appointed overseers of Blacks . . . It is negroes who strain to send their children to white schools so that the nigger in them may be killed and they may thereby become better institutionalized. (Brown, 1969, Intro, para. 3)

Carmichael notes the catch-22 of identifying as a “negro” in America: “the black person ceases to identify himself [sic] with black people yet is obviously unable to assimilate with whites” (Ture & Hamilton, 1967, p. 33). The alleged conspiracy comes full circle in further scrutinizing the motivation for integration as touted by liberal movement leaders. Writes Brown (1969),

For 400 years the internal contradictions and inconsistencies of white america have been dealt with through its institutions . . . They have always known that if they could justify and make their actions legal, either through their religion, their courts or their history (educational system), then it would be unnecessary to actually rectify them because the negro would accept their interpretation. (Chapter 1, para. 11)

Brown’s allusion to the strategy of domination proposed by William Lynch in 1712 suggests a centuries-old plot against Black Americans formulated in the days of legal slavery. Instigation of “distrust,” “envy,” and division by shade of skin (commonly referred to today as “colorism”) constituted essential parts of Lynch’s “foolproof method” to “make a negro,” a method that would “become self-refueling and self-generating for hundreds of years, maybe thousands” (italics added). Hence, “Dark negroes are taught that they are inferior not only to whites but to lighter-skinned negroes [a]nd lighter-skinned negroes assume a superior attitude,” their ignorance of the establishment’s divide and conquer ploy a direct result of socialization to White American principles (Chapter 1, para. 11). Together, the chairmen stressed the entire conspiracy—fueled by assimilation into White American society physically, mentally, and linguistically—reinforced racial hierarchies and occasioned weakness in the struggle for Black Power.

The Civil Rights “Whitewash”

Under Carmichael’s leadership, SNCC advocated for Black self-determination in the movement by explicating the extent of an invasive White-led conspiracy. Societal institutions imparted “myth[s] of white supremacy” to the masses so that “any white person who comes into the movement has the concepts in his mind about black people, if only subconsciously.” Socialized to fear the threat of Black mobilization, they “cannot escape” racist thought (SNCC, 1966, para. 2). To Carmichael, this was self-evident: “previous solutions to black problems in this country [had] been made in the interests of those whites dealing with these problems and not in the best interests of the black people in the country” (SNCC, 1966, para. 17). Concurrently, “black people often question[ed] whether or not they were equal to whites” even within the movement, “because every time they start to do something, white people [were] around showing them how to do it,” and per Brown “anything you don’t control is a weapon against you” (Brown, 1969, Chapter 5, para. 15; Carmichael, 1966, para. 25). SNCC (1966) leadership advised White policy-making ties to the Black Power movement be severed if real progress was to ever be made.

At times, Carmichael and Brown also portrayed civil rights and integration efforts as an unfortunate yet integral part of White America’s scheme of tyranny and oppression. According to Brown (1969),

Nonviolence as it is advocated by negroes is merely a preparation for genocide. Some negroes are so sold on nonviolence that if they received a letter from the White House saying to report to concentration camps, they would not hesitate. (Chapter 12, para. 24)

In Cambridge, he remonstrated against the liberal movement at large:

[F]our years ago . . . we were so non-violent it wasn’t funny. ’Cause the white man told us we had to be non-violent and he would love us. And we believed him. All the while he was shooting us, he was telling us to love him to death. (Peskin & Almes, 1967, p. 13)

In a speech at the University of California, Berkeley, Carmichael reiterated his disbelief in integration which, in his opinion, would “abolish the black community” (Ture & Hamilton, 1967, p. 55). “In fact,” he asserted, integration “when initiated by blacks” was “an insidious subterfuge for the maintenance of white supremacy” (Carmichael, 1966, para. 6). Since the dominant group controlled public patterns of speech and thought, it seemed absurd to believe minority opposition could effectively alter public perception and achieve its goals through methods sanctioned by the dominant group (Carmichael, 1966). Per these chairmen, the pursuit of equality by way of nonviolence, civil disobedience, and integration efforts was nothing short of a grand ruse to stifle the defense of Black Power.

Carmichael’s and Brown’s position regarding SNCC’s mission to combat anti-Black tyranny stirred concerns that even the most prominent civil rights leaders, who many in the Black community revered, had fallen prey to America’s deception. Activists such as Dr. King and Whitney Young Jr. of the National Urban League often used “Negro” and “black” interchangeably in their public address, implying by the SNCC chairmen’s accounts, submission to a White-dominated naming system. In “The Basis of Black Power,” SNCC drafters argued the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) maintained “a black façade” in filling its front office with Black staff to appease White allies. They charged liberal activists with allowing White agents to “subvert the Niagara movement (the forerunner of the NAACP) which, at the outset, was an all-black movement.” Furthermore, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP’s) decision to assume a new name was “very revealing,” for the title “presupposed blacks ha[d] to advance to the level of whites,” leading SNCC to deem the organization “reactionary” and “one of the main roadblocks to black freedom” (SNCC, 1966, para. 14). Convinced civil rights advocates had relinquished their dignity in the pursuit of nonviolence and assimilation, the drafters’ concluded that “the whole myth of Negro citizenship, perpetuated by the white elite . . . confused the thinking of radical and progressive blacks and whites in this country” to the detriment of the Black Power movement (SNCC, 1966, para. 29).

Conspiracy’s “Burden” of Proof

Since conspiracies thrive on a lack of (access to tangible) evidence, conspiracy admissions actively invite counter-considerations, alternative explanations, and rigorous “fact-checking” strategies to enter a public discursive space where the underlying causes of concern become less important than the prevention of an uproar and maintenance of a “correct” version of events (see Neville-Shepard, 2018). Often, accusations of conspiracy and collusion are lodged against groups with intent to discredit views opposing the status quo, consequently placing the burden of proof squarely on the shoulders of those with an already diminished capacity to prove otherwise (Freund, 1992; Neville-Shepard, 2018). Godden and Walton (2007) note the party who bears the burden of proof in an argument faces a “considerable disadvantage,” as they also assume “the responsibility of having to provide reasons in support of [their]position, and of surrendering that position should those reasons turn out to be insufficient” (p. 315). Thus, labeling arguments as “conspiratorial,” especially by one’s own admission, does little to bolster the ethos or further the goals of those who stand behind them. In the case study presented here, the legitimacy of alternate accounts of SNCC’s objectives posed the greatest obstacle to Carmichael, Brown, and other Black militants who presented explanations of the Black American condition that effectively contrasted those deemed by public opinion to be less flawed or, rather, more “factual.” Claims of conspiracy made by SNCC’s chairmen were challenged by civil rights activists, government officials, media disinformation, and other “factual,” “fanatical,” and derailing counter-considerations, rhetorically allowing detractors to equate Black activism and the pursuit of Black Power with the support of senseless violence (see Brockriede & Scott, 1968). For example, upon the release of Brown’s, 1969 autobiography Die Nigger Die!, a New York Times reporter posed the question, “Is there in fact a conspiracy in America to destroy the black man?” to which he answered, “There is, of course, no aboveground conspiracy mapped out by common consensus.” And while the article admits that “white America [did] seem to nourish the almost undisguised wish that the black man would disappear,” certainly civil rights leaders, the vanguard of 1960s social progress, could not be accused of perpetuating their own oppression (Stevens, 1969).

1960s Era Deniers and Detractors

Although neither Carmichael nor Brown sanctioned violence for violence’s sake, SNCC’s demands for Black self-determination—read by many as “black separatism”—were redolent of doctrines of separatism upheld by the Supreme Court and violent resistance sanctioned by Jim Crow laws in the South, remnants of America’s intolerant past which many progressives wished to forget (Brockriede & Scott, 1968; SNCC, 1966). Detractors likened the objectives of Black Power to Black nationalism, a radical conspiratorial cosmological doctrine preached by leaders of the Nation of Islam (NOI; Isserman & Kazin, 2012; “SNCC and Black Nationalism,” 1966). In one fell swoop, Christian ideology (“the biggest ruse in the devil’s bag of tricks”), its intimate ties to nonviolence, and White Americans alike came under fire by members of the NOI: “Biblespouting reverends [had] fooled African Americans into worshipping a white God and longing for brotherhood with people who lynched and exploited them” (Isserman & Kazin, 2012, p. 43). Carmichael and Brown seemed to agree, disparaging missionaries of the “white man’s religion” who “turned the Africans’ eyes toward heaven, and then robbed them blind in the process” (Brown, 1969; Ture & Hamilton, 1967, p. 27). Similarly, accounts of civil rights leaders and media drew similarities between Black Power and historically odious beliefs in “White Power” (see Brockriede & Scott, 1968). For instance, according to the New York Times, Brown’s “paranoia” was “little different in kind from that disease which causes the Ku Klux Klan and their ilk to view all blacks as inferior beings” (Stevens, 1969). Dr. King, the NAACP’s Roy Wilkins and Charles Evers, and U.S. Vice President Hubert Humphrey openly disparaged the phrase as “black supremacy,” “antiwhite power,” “apartheid,” and “reverse racism” equivalents (“Avoid Hate, Blacks Told by Evers,” 1971; “Black Power,” 1966; Handler, 1966). A 1966 New York Times article even juxtaposed a photo of a “militant” Carmichael with that of the Reverend King, suggesting a deep ideological chasm between movement factions (Roberts, 1966).

Condemnations of Black militants often included accusations of delinquency, charges of social and psychological dysfunction, and general reproach as ungrateful, chauvinistic young people who refused to recognize contributions by White Americans to the civil rights cause. Mass media presented a predominantly violent and racist image of Carmichael to the public, effectively damaging his ability to communicate the significance of Black power to a White liberal audience (Brockriede & Scott, 1968). Carmichael remembers,

We were not only anti-American agents of atheistic Communism . . . we also were deranged, diseased, drug-crazed degenerates, mongrels, and sexual perverts. . . . It clearly would be a patriotic act, a civic duty, to exterminate vermin such as we were alleged to be. (Carmichael & Thelwell, 2003, p. 351)

These accusations stoked fears that White allies would become indisposed—or worse resistant—to changes in race relations. “Are you a Southerner who risked livelihood and community status to advocate integrated schools?” one 1968 article began (Wicker, 1968). Another 1967 editorial asserted “the philosophy of ‘black power’ in the Southern civil rights movement grew largely out of the Negro’s resentment and sexual jealousy of white civil rights workers,” distorting SNCC’s commonly argued impetus of Black political and social independence (Brody, 1967). Brown’s name surfaced frequently in stories describing his disposition to anger and violence (“An Affable but Angry Rights Leader,” 1967; Franklin, 1967; Stevens, 1969). “It should be clear,” a Los Angeles Times reporter wrote, “that militant Black Nationalism, by definition divisive, isn’t going to further general Negro progress. Its most predictable result rather would be to strengthen the stand of die-hard segregationists, and to rekindle the fears of many recently converted white moderates.” The article concludes, “If this is what SNCC’s new leaders want, they can hardly claim to be working in the cause of Negro betterment” (“SNCC and Black Nationalism,” 1966).

History in Hindsight: Modern Revelations

Although civil rights activists lodged similar complaints about White liberal allies in the movement, Carmichael’s and Brown’s claims of conspiracy directly challenged more widely supported “counter-attitudinal positions” of nonviolence and integration efforts, resulting in the dismissal of their methods and their claims (Billig, 1988; Zeitz, 2017). Protesters suffered bodily harm at the hands of fervent separatists and the Ku Klux Klan in the South, while others endured economic hardship under directives from White Citizens Councils scattered throughout the United States, and educational inequality in states that pursued aversive tactics of interposition and nullification (Isserman & Kazin, 2012). Furthermore, campaigns led by civil rights organizations like the SCLC in Alabama drew favorable attention to the struggle for equality, as the backlash against violent attacks on protesters directly contributed to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Even as far back as the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955, peaceable protest had resulted in the desegregation of public spaces. For many, it seemed illogical at best to expound “eye for an eye” during a time where “turn the other cheek” appeared to produce tangible results.

Far from irrational, however, grievances lodged by 1960s era and modern day activists regarding the systematic annihilation and subjugation of Black people by the establishment, clandestine or otherwise, have historical precedent denoted by over 200 years of legal enslavement; state and local Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation in Southern states; the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment, conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service; and research conducted by the Medical College of Virginia, funded by the U.S. Army in collaboration with the Atomic Energy Commission, just to name a few incidents. That recent deaths of numerous unarmed Black victims by police—including 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones in 2010 and 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014—have either received no conviction or have been dismissed entirely fits squarely into this narrative, or rather pattern, of oppression. These issues are further compounded by murders of Black advocates and civil rights allies past and present. Twentieth-century revelations also vindicate many of the chairmen’s arguments regarding a secretive plot to destabilize 1960s social movements, especially those deemed dangerous by government entities. For example, documents released by the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission—a governor-run state agency in operation until 1977—show the organization collected over 600 records on Carmichael alone, including photos, personal information, newsletter clippings, and “official” in-house reports regarding his whereabouts and activity (Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1998). Once lamented by Carmichael as a “spook-and-dirty-tricks agency,” the organization was suspected of playing a part in the 1964 murders of three civil rights volunteers (Carmichael & Thelwell, 2003, p. 351; Carmichael, 1966). It also reportedly “funneled small amounts of money to black supporters of segregation” to infiltrate civil rights gatherings (Aron, 2017). Furthermore, Morgan (2010) notes that as FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover actively discouraged insurgent movement activity and lamented the “rise of a ‘black messiah’[,] ominously mentioning King, Stokely Carmichael, and Elijah Muhammad by name, in addition to the already martyred Malcolm X” in a 1968 memo (p. 198).