title: Stokely Carmichael

text: At Howard, Carmichael joined the Nonviolent Action Group (NAG), the Howard campus affiliate of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Kahn introduced Carmichael and the other SNCC activists to Bayard Rustin, an African-American leader who became an influential adviser to SNCC. Inspired by the sit-in movement in the southern United States during college, Carmichael became more active in the Civil Rights Movement.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: In his first year at Howard, in 1961, Carmichael participated in the Freedom Rides that the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organized to desegregate the interstate buses and bus station restaurants along U.S. Route 40 between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., as they came under federal rather than state law. They had been segregated by custom. He was frequently arrested, and spent time in jail. He was arrested so many times for his activism that he lost count, sometimes estimating 29 or 32. In 1998, he told the "Washington Post" that he thought the total was fewer than 36.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Along with eight other riders, on June 4, 1961, Carmichael traveled by train from New Orleans, Louisiana, to Jackson, Mississippi, to integrate the formerly "white" section on the train. Before getting on the train in New Orleans, they encountered white protesters blocking the way. Carmichael said, "They were shouting. Throwing cans and lit cigarettes at us. Spitting on us." Eventually, the group was able to board the train. When the group arrived in Jackson, Carmichael and the eight other riders entered a "white" cafeteria. They were charged with disturbing the peace, arrested, and taken to jail.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Eventually, Carmichael was transferred to the infamous Parchman Penitentiary in Sunflower County, Mississippi, along with other Freedom Riders. He gained notoriety as a witty and hard-nosed leader among the prisoners.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: He served 49 days with other activists at Parchman. At 19, Carmichael was the youngest detainee in the summer of 1961. He spent 53 days at Parchman in a six-by-nine cell. He and his colleagues were allowed to shower only twice a week, were not allowed books or any other personal effects, and were at times placed in maximum security to isolate them.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: The sheriff acted like he was scared of black folks and he came up with some beautiful things. One night he opened up all the windows, put on ten big fans and an air conditioner and dropped the temperature to 38 degrees [Fahrenheit; 3 °C]. All we had on was T-shirts and shorts.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: While being hurt one time, Carmichael began singing to the guards, "I'm gonna tell God how you treat me", and the other prisoners joined in.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Carmichael kept the group's morale up in prison, often telling jokes with Steve Green and the other Freedom Riders, and making light of their situation. He knew their situation was serious.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: What with the range of ideology, religious belief, political commitment and background, age, and experience, something interesting was always going on. Because no matter our differences, this group had one thing in common, moral stubbornness. Whatever we believed, we really believed and were not at all shy about advancing. We were where we were only because of our willingness to affirm our beliefs even at the risk of physical injury. So it was never dull on death row.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: In a 1964 interview with author Robert Penn Warren, Carmichael reflected on his motives for going on the rides:


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: I thought I have to go because you've got to keep the issue alive, and you've got to show the Southerners that you're not gonna be scared off, as we've been scared off in the past. And no matter what they do, we're still gonna keep coming back.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: In 1964, Carmichael became a full-time field organizer for SNCC in Mississippi. He worked on the Greenwood voting rights project under Bob Moses. Throughout Freedom Summer, he worked with grassroots African-American activists, including Fannie Lou Hamer, whom Carmichael named as one of his personal heroes. SNCC organizer Joann Gavin wrote that Hamer and Carmichael "understood one another as perhaps no one else could."


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: He also worked closely with Gloria Richardson, who led the SNCC chapter in Cambridge, Maryland. During a protest with Richardson in Maryland in June 1964, Carmichael was hit directly in a chemical gas attack by the National Guard and had to be hospitalized.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: He soon became project director for Mississippi's 2nd congressional district, made up largely of the counties of the Mississippi Delta. At that time, most blacks in Mississippi had been disfranchised since the passage of a new constitution in 1890. The summer project was to prepare them to register to vote and conduct a parallel registration movement to demonstrate how much people wanted to vote. Grassroots activists organized the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), as the regular Democratic Party did not represent African Americans in the state. At the end of Freedom Summer, Carmichael went to the 1964 Democratic Convention in support of the MFDP, which sought to have its delegation seated. But the MFDP delegates were refused voting rights by the Democratic National Committee, which chose to seat the regular white Jim Crow delegation. Carmichael, along with many SNCC staff members, left the convention with a profound sense of disillusionment in the American political system, and what he later called "totalitarian liberal opinion". He said, "what the liberal really wants is to bring about change which will not in any way endanger his position".


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Having developed an aversion to working with the Democratic Party after the 1964 convention, Carmichael decided to leave the MFDP. Instead he began exploring SNCC projects in Alabama in 1965. During the period of the Selma to Montgomery marches, James Forman recruited him to participate in a "second front" to stage protests at the Alabama State Capitol in March 1965. Carmichael became disillusioned with the growing struggles between SNCC and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which opposed Forman's strategy. He thought SCLC was working with affiliated black churches to undercut it. He was also frustrated to be drawn again into nonviolent confrontations with police, which he no longer found empowering. After seeing protesters brutally beaten again, he collapsed from stress, and his colleagues urged him to leave the city.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Within a week, Carmichael returned to protesting, this time in Selma, to participate in the final march along Route 80 to the state capital. But on March 23, 1965, Carmichael and some in SNCC who were participating in the Selma to Montgomery march declined to complete the march, instead initiating a grassroots project in "Bloody Lowndes" County, along the march route, talking with local residents. This was a county known for white violence against blacks during this era, where SCLC and Martin Luther King Jr. had tried and failed to organize its black residents. From 1877 to 1950, Lowndes County had 14 documented lynchings of African Americans. Carmichael and the SNCC activists who accompanied him also struggled in Lowndes, as local residents were at first wary of their presence. But they later achieved greater success as a result of a partnership with local activist John Hulett and other local leaders.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: In 1965, working as a SNCC activist in the black-majority Lowndes County, Alabama, Carmichael helped increase the number of registered black voters from 70 to 2,600, being 300 more than the number of registered white voters. Black voters had essentially been disfranchised by Alabama's constitution, passed by white Democrats in 1901. After Congressional passage in August of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the federal government was authorized to oversee and enforce their rights. There was still tremendous resistance from wary residents, but an important breakthrough occurred when, while he was handing out voter registration material at a local school, two policemen confronted Carmichael and ordered him to leave. He refused, and avoided arrest after challenging the two officers to do so. As word of this incident spread, Carmichael and the SNCC activists who stayed with him in Lowndes gained more respect from local residents and started working with Hulett and other local leaders. With the objective of registering African American voters, Carmichael, Hulett and their local allies formed the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO), a party that had the black panther as its mascot, over the white-dominated local Democratic Party, whose mascot was a white rooster. Since federal protection from violent voter suppression by the Ku Klux Klan and other white opponents was sporadic, most Lowndes County activists openly carried arms.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Despite Carmichael's role in forming the LCFO, Hulett served as the group's chairperson and became one of the first two African Americans whose voter registration was successfully processed in Lowndes County. Although black residents and voters outnumbered whites in Lowndes, their candidate lost the countywide election of 1965. In 1966, several LCFO candidates ran for office in the general election but lost. In 1970, the LCFO merged with the statewide Democratic Party, and former LCFO candidates, including Hulett, won their first offices in the county.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Carmichael became chairman of SNCC in 1966, taking over from John Lewis, an activist who later was elected to Congress. James Meredith had initiated a solitary March Against Fear in early June of that year from Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi. He did not want the big civil rights organizations or leaders involved, but was willing to have individual black men join him. On his second day out, Meredith was shot and wounded by a sniper and had to be hospitalized. Civil rights leaders vowed to finish the march in his name.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Carmichael joined King, Floyd McKissick, Cleveland Sellers and others to continue Meredith's march. He was arrested in Greenwood during the march. After his release, he gave his first "Black Power" speech at a rally that night, using the phrase to urge black pride and socioeconomic independence:


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: According to historian David J. Garrow, a few days after Carmichael spoke about Black Power at the rally during "Meredith March Against Fear", he told King: "Martin, I deliberately decided to raise this issue on the march in order to give it a national forum and force you to take a stand for Black Power." King responded, "I have been used before. One more time won't hurt."


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: While Black Power was not a new concept, Carmichael's speech brought it into the spotlight. It became a rallying cry for young African Americans across the country who were frustrated by slow progress in civil rights, even after federal legislation had been passed to strengthen the effort. Everywhere that Black Power spread, if accepted, Carmichael got credit. If it was condemned, he was held responsible and blamed. According to Carmichael, "Black Power meant black people coming together to form a political force and either electing representatives or forcing their representatives to speak to their needs [rather than relying on established parties]". Strongly influenced by the work of Frantz Fanon and his landmark book "The Wretched of the Earth", along with others such as Malcolm X, Carmichael led SNCC to become more radical. The group focused on Black Power as its core goal and ideology.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: During the controversial Atlanta Project in 1966, SNCC, under the local leadership of Bill Ware, engaged in a voter drive to promote the candidacy of Julian Bond from an Atlanta district for a seat in the Georgia State Legislature. Ware excluded Northern white SNCC members from working on this drive. Carmichael initially opposed this decision but changed his mind. At the urging of the Atlanta Project, the issue of white members in SNCC came up for a vote. Carmichael ultimately sided with those calling for the expulsion of whites. He said that whites should organize poor white southern communities, of which there were plenty, while SNCC focused on promoting African-American self-reliance through Black Power.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Carmichael considered nonviolence a tactic, not a fundamental principle, which separated him from civil rights leaders such as King. He criticized civil rights leaders who called for the integration of African Americans into existing institutions of the middle-class mainstream.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Now, several people have been upset because we've said that integration was irrelevant when initiated by blacks, and that in fact it was a subterfuge, an insidious subterfuge, for the maintenance of white supremacy. Now we maintain that in the past six years or so, this country has been feeding us a "thalidomide drug of integration", and that some Negroes have been walking down a dream street talking about sitting next to white people; and that that does not begin to solve the problem; that when we went to Mississippi we did not go to sit next to Ross Barnett; we did not go to sit next to Jim Clark; we went to get them out of our way; and that people ought to understand that; that we were never fighting for the right to integrate, we were fighting against white supremacy. Now, then, in order to understand white supremacy we must dismiss the fallacious notion that white people can give anybody their freedom. No man can give anybody his freedom. A man is born free. You may enslave a man after he is born free, and that is in fact what this country does. It enslaves black people after they're born, so that the only acts that white people can do is to stop denying black people their freedom; that is, they must stop "denying" freedom. They never give it to anyone.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: During Carmichael's leadership, SNCC continued to maintain a coalition with several white radical organizations, most notably Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). It encouraged the SDS to focus on militant anti-draft resistance. At an SDS-organized conference at UC Berkeley in October 1966, Carmichael challenged the white left to escalate their resistance to the military draft in a manner similar to the black movement. For a time in 1967, he considered an alliance with Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation, and generally supported IAF's work in Rochester's and Buffalo's black communities.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: SNCC conducted its first actions against the military draft and the Vietnam War under Carmichael's leadership. He popularized the oft-repeated anti-draft slogan "Hell no, we won't go!" during this time.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Carmichael encouraged King to demand unconditional withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam, even as some King advisers cautioned him that such opposition might have an adverse effect on financial contributions to the SCLC. King preached one of his earliest speeches calling for unconditional withdrawal with Carmichael in the front row at his invitation. Carmichael privately took credit for pushing King toward anti-imperialism, and historians such as Peniel Joseph and Michael Eric Dyson agree.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Carmichael joined King in New York on April 15, 1967, to share his views with protesters on race related to the Vietnam War:


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: In May 1967, Carmichael stepped down as chairman of SNCC and was replaced by H. Rap Brown. SNCC was a collective and worked by group consensus rather than hierarchically; many members had become displeased with Carmichael's celebrity status. SNCC leaders had begun to refer to him as "Stokely Starmichael" and criticized his habit of making policy announcements independently, before achieving internal agreement. According to historian Clayborne Carson, Carmichael did not protest the transfer of power and was "eager to relinquish the chair". It is sometimes mistakenly reported that Carmichael left SNCC completely at this time and joined the Black Panther Party, but that did not occur until 1968. SNCC officially ended its relationship with Carmichael in August 1968; in a statement, Philip Hutchings wrote, "It has been apparent for some time that SNCC and Stokely Carmichael were moving in different directions."


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: During this period, Carmichael was targeted by a section of J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO (counter-intelligence program) that focused on black activists; the program promoted slander and violence against targets Hoover considered enemies of the US government. It attempted to discredit them and worse. Carmichael accepted the position of Honorary Prime Minister in the Black Panther Party, but also remained on the SNCC staff. He tried to forge a merger between the two organizations. A March 4, 1968 memo from Hoover states his fear of the rise of a Black Nationalist "messiah" and that Carmichael alone had the "necessary charisma to be a real threat in this way". In July 1968, Hoover stepped up his efforts to divide the black power movement. Declassified documents show he launched a plan to undermine the SNCC-Panther merger, as well as to "bad-jacket" Carmichael as a CIA agent. Both efforts were largely successful: Carmichael was expelled from SNCC that year, and the Panthers began to denounce him, putting him at grave personal risk.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: After stepping down as SNCC chair, Carmichael wrote the book "" (1967) with Charles V. Hamilton. It is a first-person reflection on his experiences in SNCC and his dissatisfaction with the direction of the Civil Rights Movement in the late 1960s. Throughout the work he directly and indirectly criticizes the established leadership of the SCLC and NAACP for their tactics and results, often claiming that they were accepting symbols instead of change.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: He promoted what he calls "political modernization." This idea included three major concepts: "1) questioning old values and institutions of the society; 2) searching for new and different forms of political structure to solve political and economic problems; and, 3) broadening the base of political participation to include more people in the decision-making process." By questioning "old values and institutions", Carmichael was referring not only to the established Black leadership of the time but also to the values and institutions of the nation as a whole. He criticized the emphasis on the American "middle-class." "The values," he said, "of that class are based on material aggrandizement, not the expansion of humanity." (40) Carmichael believed that blacks were being lured to enter the "middle-class" as a trap, in which they would be assimilated into the white world by turning their backs on others of their race who were still suffering. This assimilation, he thought, was an inherent indictment of blackness and validation of whiteness as the preferred state. He said, "Thus we reject the goal of assimilation into middle-class America because the values of that class are in themselves anti-humanist and because that class as a social force perpetuates racism."


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Secondly, Carmichael discussed searching for different forms of political structure to solve political and economic problems. At the time, the established forms of political structure were the SCLC and the NAACP. These groups were religiously and academically based and focused on nonviolence and steady legal and legislative change within established U.S. systems and structures. Carmichael rejected that. He discusses the development of the Mississippi Freedom Democrats, the 1966 local election in Lowndes County, and the political history of Tuskegee, Alabama. He chose these examples as places where blacks changed the system by political and legal maneuvering within the system, but said they ultimately failed to achieve more than the bare minimum. In the process, he believed they reinforced the political and legal structures that perpetuated the racism they were fighting.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: In response to these failures and to offer a way forward, Carmichael discusses the concept of coalition with regard to the Civil Rights Movement. The leadership of the movement had affirmed that anyone who truly believed in their cause was welcome to join and march. Carmichael offered a different vision. Influenced by Fanon's ideas in "The Wretched of the Earth", wherein two groups were not "complementary" (could have no overlap) until they were mutually exclusive (were on an equal power footing economically, socially, politically, etc.), Carmichael said that U.S. blacks had to unite and build their power independent of the white structure, or they would never be able to build a coalition that would function for both parties, not just the dominant one. He said, "we want to establish the grounds on which we feel political coalitions can be viable." For this to happen, Carmichael argued that blacks had to address three myths regarding coalition: "that the interests of black people are identical with the interests of certain liberal, labor, or other reform groups"; that a viable coalition can be created between "the politically and economically secure and the politically and economically insecure"; and that a coalition can be "sustained on a moral, friendly, sentimental basis; by appeals to conscience." He believed that each of these myths showed the need for two groups to be mutually exclusive, and on relatively equal footing, to be in a viable coalition.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: This philosophy, grounded in the independence literature of Africa and Latin America, became the basis for a great deal of Carmichael's work. He believed the Black Power Movement had to be developed outside the white power structure.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Carmichael also continued as a strong critic of the Vietnam War and imperialism in general. During this period he traveled and lectured extensively throughout the world, visiting Guinea, North Vietnam, China, and Cuba. He became more clearly identified with the Black Panther Party as its "Honorary Prime Minister." During this period, he acted more as a speaker than an organizer, traveling throughout the country and internationally advocating for his vision of Black Power.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Carmichael visited the United Kingdom in July 1967 to attend the Dialectics of Liberation conference. After recordings of his speeches were released by the organizers, the Institute of Phenomenological Studies, he was banned from reentering Britain. In August 1967, a Cuban government magazine reported that Carmichael met with Fidel Castro for three days and called it "the most educational, most interesting, and the best apprenticeship of [my] public life." Because relations with Cuba were prohibited at the time, after his return to the US, the government withdrew his passport. In December 1967, he traveled to France to attend an antiwar rally. There he was detained by police and ordered to leave the next day, but government officials eventually intervened and allowed him to stay.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Carmichael was present in Washington, D.C. on April 5, 1968, the night after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. He led a group through the streets, demanding that businesses close out of respect. He tried to prevent violence, but the situation escalated beyond his control. Due to his reputation as a provocateur, the news media blamed Carmichael for the ensuing violence as mobs rioted along U Street and other areas of black commercial development.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Carmichael held a press conference the next day at which he predicted mass racial violence in the streets. Since moving to Washington, he had been under nearly constant FBI surveillance. After the riots, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover instructed a team of agents to find evidence connecting Carmichael to them. He was also subjected to COINTELPRO's bad-jacketing technique. Huey P. Newton suggested Carmichael was a CIA agent, slander that led to Carmichael's break with the Panthers and his exile from the U.S. the following year.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: In 1968, he married Miriam Makeba, a noted singer from South Africa. They left the US for Guinea the next year. Carmichael became an aide to Guinean president Ahmed Sékou Touré, and a student of the exiled Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah. Makeba was appointed Guinea's official delegate to the United Nations.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Three months after his arrival in Guinea, in July 1969 Carmichael published a formal rejection of the Black Panthers, condemning them for not being separatist enough and for their "dogmatic party line favoring alliances with white radicals". The Panthers believed that white activists could help the movement, while Carmichael had come to agree with Malcolm X that white activists should organize their own communities before trying to lead black people.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Carmichael remained in Guinea after his separation from the Black Panther Party. He continued to travel, write, and speak in support of international leftist movements. In 1971 he published his collected essays in a second book, "Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism". This book expounds an explicitly socialist Pan-African vision, which he retained for the rest of his life.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Carmichael changed his name to Kwame Ture in 1978 to honor Nkrumah and Touré, who had become his patrons. At the end of his life, friends called him by both names, "and he doesn't seem to mind".


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: In 1986, two years after Sékou Touré's death, the military regime that took his place arrested Carmichael for his association with Touré, and jailed him for three days on suspicion of attempting to overthrow the government. Although Touré was known for jailing and torturing his opponents (some 50,000 people are believed to have been killed under his regime) Carmichael had never publicly criticized the man he named himself after. From the late 1970s till his death, he answered his phone by announcing, "Ready for the revolution!"


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Carmichael's suspicions about CIA surveillance were confirmed in 2007 by declassified documents revealing that the agency had tracked him from 1968 as part of their surveillance of Black activists abroad. The surveillance continued for years.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Documents declassified in 2022 revealed that the Information Research Department of the Government of the United Kingdom, concerned about the growing African independence movement, perceived left-wing groups for liberation as a threat to British interests. The British organization attacked Carmichael by distributing literature from fake sources to discredit him and the Black Power movement after he arrived in Africa, including creating fake organizations called "The Black Power – Africa’s Heritage Group" in west Africa and "The Organisation of African Students for African Power" supposedly in East Germany.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: For the final 30 years of his life, Kwame Ture was devoted to the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP). His mentor Nkrumah had many ideas for unifying the African continent, and Ture extended the scope of these ideas to the entire African diaspora. He was a Central Committee member during his association with the A-APRP and made many speeches on the party's behalf.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Ture did not simply study with Sékou Touré and Kwame Nkrumah. The latter had been designated honorary co-president of Guinea after he was deposed by the US-backed coup in Ghana. Ture worked overtly and covertly to "Take Nkrumah Back to Ghana" (according to the movement's slogan). He became a member of the Democratic Party of Guinea (PDG), the revolutionary ruling party. He sought Nkrumah's permission to launch the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP), which Nkrumah had called for in his book "Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare". After several discussions, Nkrumah gave his blessing.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Ture was convinced that the A-APRP was needed as a permanent mass-based organization in all countries where people of African descent lived. For the last decades of his life, a period often ignored by popular media, Ture worked full-time as an organizer of the party. He spoke on its behalf on several continents, at college campuses, community centers, and other venues. He was instrumental in strengthening ties between the African/Black liberation movement and several revolutionary or progressive organizations, both African and non-African. Notable among them were the American Indian Movement (AIM) of the United States, New Jewel Movement (Grenada), National Joint Action Committee (NJAC) of Trinidad and Tobago, Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the Pan Africanist Congress (South Africa) and the Irish Republican Socialist Party.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Routinely, Ture was regarded as the leader of the A-APRP, but his only titles were "Organizer" and Central Committee member. Beginning in the mid-1970s, the A-APRP began each May to sponsor African Liberation Day (ALD), a continuation of the African Freedom Day Nkrumah began in 1958 in Ghana. Although the party was involved in or was primary or co-sponsor of other ALD annual observances, marches, and rallies around the world, the best-known and largest event was held annually in Washington, DC, usually at Meridian Hill Park (also known as Malcolm X Park) at 16th and W Streets, NW.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: While making his home in Guinea, Ture traveled frequently. In the last quarter of the 20th century, he became the world's most active and prominent exponent of pan-Africanism, defined by Nkrumah and the A-APRP as "The Liberation and Unification of Africa Under Scientific Socialism".


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Ture often returned to speak to audiences of thousands (including students and townspeople) at his alma mater, Howard University, and other campuses. The Party worked to recruit students and other youth, and Ture hoped to attract them with his speeches. He also worked to raise the political consciousness of African/Black people in general. He formed the A-APRP with the initial goal of putting "Africa" on the lips of Black people throughout the diaspora, knowing that many did not consciously or positively relate to their ancestral homeland. Ture was convinced that the party significantly raised international black "consciousness" of Pan-Africanism. The government of Trinidad and Tobago barred him from lecturing in the country for fear that he would cause disturbances among black Trinidadians.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Under his leadership, the A-APRP organized the All African Women's Revolutionary Union and the Sammy Younge Jr. Brigade (named after the first black college student to die during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement) as component organizations.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Ture and Cuban president Fidel Castro admired each other, sharing a common opposition to imperialism. In Ture's final letter, he wrote:


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: It was Fidel Castro who before the OLAS (Organization of Latin American States) Conference said "if imperialism touches one grain of hair on his head, we shall not let the fact pass without retaliation." It was he, who on his own behalf, asked them all to stay in contact with me when I returned to the United States to offer me protection.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Ture was ill when he gave his final speech at Howard University. A standing-room-only crowd in Rankin Chapel paid tribute to him, and he spoke boldly, as usual. A small group of student leaders from Howard and a former Party member traveled to Harlem (Sugar Hill) in New York City to bid Ture farewell shortly before his final return to Guinea. Also present that evening were Kathleen Cleaver and another Black Panther, Dhoruba bin Wahad. Ture was in good spirits though in pain. The group included men and women born in Africa, South America, the Caribbean, as well as the USA.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: After his diagnosis of prostate cancer in 1996, Ture was treated for a period in Cuba, while receiving some support from the Nation of Islam. Benefit concerts for Ture were held in Denver, New York, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C., to help defray his medical expenses. The government of Trinidad and Tobago, where he was born, awarded him a grant of $1,000 a month for the same purpose. He went to New York, where he was treated for two years at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, before returning to Guinea.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: In a final interview given in April 1998 to "The Washington Post", Ture criticized the limited economic and electoral progress made by African Americans in the U.S. during the previous 30 years. He acknowledged that blacks had won election to the mayor's office in major cities, but said that, as the mayors' power had generally diminished over earlier decades, such progress was essentially meaningless.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: In 1998 Ture died of prostate cancer at the age of 57 in Conakry, Guinea. He had said that his cancer "was given to me by forces of American imperialism and others who conspired with them." He claimed that the FBI had infected him with cancer in an assassination attempt.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: The civil rights leader Jesse Jackson spoke in celebration of Ture's life, saying: "He was one of our generation who was determined to give his life to transforming America and Africa. He was committed to ending racial apartheid in our country. He helped to bring those walls down". NAACP Chair Julian Bond said that Carmichael "ought to be remembered for having spent almost every moment of his adult life trying to advance the cause of black liberation."


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Ture married Miriam Makeba, the noted singer from South Africa, in the US in 1968. They divorced in Guinea after separating in 1973.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Later he married Marlyatou Barry, a Guinean doctor. They divorced sometime after having a son, Bokar, in 1981. By 1998, Marlyatou Barry and Bokar were living in Arlington County, Virginia, near Washington, DC. Using a statement from the All-African People's Revolutionary Party as a reference, Ture's 1998 obituary in "The New York Times" referred to his survivors as two sons, three sisters, and his mother.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Ture, along with Charles V. Hamilton, is credited with coining the phrase "institutional racism", defined as racism that occurs through institutions such as public bodies and corporations, including universities. In the late 1960s Ture defined "institutional racism" as "the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their color, culture or ethnic origin".


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: In his book on King, David J. Garrow criticizes Ture's handling of the Black Power movement as "more destructive than constructive". Garrow describes the period in 1966 when Ture and other SNCC members managed to register 2,600 African American voters in Lowndes County as the most consequential period in Ture's life "in terms of real, positive, tangible influence on people's lives". Evaluations by Ture's associates are also mixed, with most praising his efforts and others criticizing him for failing to find constructive ways to achieve his objectives. SNCC's final chair, Phil Hutchings, who expelled Ture over a dispute about the Black Panther Party, wrote, "Even though we kidded and called him 'Starmichael', he could sublimate his ego to get done what was needed to be done...He would say what he thought, and you could disagree with it but you wouldn't cease being a human being and someone with whom he wanted to be in relationship." "Washington Post" staff writer Paula Span described Carmichael as someone who was rarely hesitant to push his own ideology. Tufts University historian Peniel Joseph's biography, "Stokely: A Life", says that Black Power activist Ruby Doris Smith Robinson, the first to call him as "Stokely Starmichael," gave him the nickname in protest of his growing ego and that other SNCC staff shared her view.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Joseph credits Ture with expanding the parameters of the civil rights movement, asserting that his black power strategy "didn't disrupt the civil rights movement. It spoke truth to power to what so many millions of young people were feeling. It actually cast a light on people who were in prisons, people who were welfare rights activists, tenants' rights activists, and also in the international arena." Tavis Smiley calls Ture "one of the most underappreciated, misunderstood, undervalued personalities this country's ever produced".


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: In 2002, the American-born scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Ture as one of his 100 Greatest African Americans.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Ture is also remembered for his actions in James Meredith's March Against Fear in June 1966, when he issued the call for Black Power. When Meredith got shot, Carmichael came up with the phrase and gathered a crowd to chant it in Greenwood, Mississippi. Already, earlier that day, he had been arrested for the 27th time; he spoke to over 3,000 people that day in the park. Ture was angry that day because black people had been "chanting" freedom for almost six years with no results, so he wanted to change the chant. He also participated in and contributed to the Black Freedom Struggle. Many people have overlooked his involvement in the movement. He never switched from left to right in his politics as he got older, and his trajectory both marked and influenced the course of black militancy in the United States. The outrage that most affected him was King's assassination.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Although he stated in his posthumously published memoirs that he had never been anti-semitic, in 1970 Carmichael proclaimed: "I have never admired a white man, but the greatest of them, to my mind, was Hitler." However, Carmichael in the same speech condemned Hitler on moral grounds, Carmichael himself stating:


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Adolph Hitler—I'm not putting a judgment on what he did—if you asked me for my judgment morally, I would say it was bad, what he did was wrong, was evil, etc. But I would say he was a genius, nevertheless . . . . You say he's not a genius because he committed bad acts. That's not the question. The question is, he does have genius. Now when we condemn him morally or ethically, we will say, well, he was absolutely wrong, he should be killed, he should be murdered, etc., etc. . . . But if we're judging his genius objectively, we have to admit that the man was a genius. He forced the entire world to fight him. He was fighting America, France, Britain, Russia, Italy once— then they switched sides—all of them at the same time, and whipping them. That's a genius, you cannot deny that.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: In November 1964 Carmichael made a joking remark in response to a SNCC position paper written by his friends Casey Hayden and Mary E. King on the position of women in the movement. In the course of an irreverent comedy monologue he performed at a party after SNCC's Waveland conference, Carmichael said, "The position of women in the movement is prone." A number of women were offended. In a 2006 "The Chronicle of Higher Education" article, historian Peniel E. Joseph later wrote:


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: While the remark was made in jest during a 1964 conference, Carmichael and black-power activists did embrace an aggressive vision of manhood — one centered on black men's ability to deploy authority, punishment, and power. In that, they generally reflected their wider society's blinders about women and politics.


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Carmichael's colleague, John Lewis, stated in his autobiography, "March", that the comment was a joke, uttered as Carmichael and other SNCC officials were "blowing off steam" following the adjournment of a meeting at a staff retreat in Waveland, Mississippi. When asked about the comment, former SNCC field secretary Casey Hayden stated: "Our paper on the position of women came up, and Stokely in his hipster rap comedic way joked that 'the proper position of women in SNCC is prone'. I laughed, he laughed, we all laughed. Stokely was a friend of mine." In her memoir, Mary E. King wrote that Carmichael was "poking fun at his own attitudes" and that "Casey and I felt, and continue to feel, that Stokely was one of the most responsive men at the time that our anonymous paper appeared in 1964."


title: Stokely Carmichael

text: Carmichael appointed several women to posts as project directors during his tenure as chairman of SNCC; by the latter half of the 1960s (considered to be the "Black Power era"), more women were in charge of SNCC projects than during the first half.


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: The King of Comedy is a 1982 American satirical black comedy drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Robert De Niro (in his fifth collaboration with Scorsese), Jerry Lewis and Sandra Bernhard. Written by Paul D. Zimmerman, the film focuses on themes such as celebrity worship and American media culture. 20th Century Fox released the film on February 18, 1983, in the United States, though the film was released two months earlier in Iceland.


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: Production began in New York on June 1, 1981 to avoid clashing with a forthcoming writers' strike, and opened at the Cannes Film Festival in 1983. The film received mostly positive reviews from critics but was a flop at the box office, grossing only $2.5 million against its $19 million budget. It is the first production of Embassy International Pictures, later Regency Enterprises, and is also Jerry Lewis's final film for 20th Century Fox.


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: Rupert Pupkin is a delusional and aspiring stand-up comedian trying to launch his career. After meeting Jerry Langford, a successful comedian and talk-show host, Rupert believes his "big break" has finally come. He attempts to book a spot on Langford's show, but is continually rebuffed by his staff, particularly Cathy Long, and finally by Langford himself. Along the way, Rupert indulges in elaborate and obsessive fantasies in which he and Langford are colleagues and friends.


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: Hoping to impress, Rupert invites a date, Rita, to accompany him when he arrives uninvited at Langford's country home. When Langford returns home to find Rupert and Rita settling in, he angrily tells them to leave. Rupert continues brushing off Jerry's dismissals and Rita's urging until Jerry finally retorts that he had only told Rupert he could call him so Jerry would get rid of him. Bitterly vowing to work "50 times harder", Rupert finally leaves.


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: Exhausted with rejection, Rupert hatches a kidnapping plot with the help of Masha, a fellow stalker similarly obsessed with Langford. As ransom, Rupert demands that he be given the opening spot on that evening's episode of Langford's show (guest hosted by Tony Randall) and that the show be broadcast in normal fashion. The network's bosses, lawyers and the FBI agree to his demands, with the understanding that Langford will be released once the show airs. Between the taping of the show and the broadcast, Masha has her "dream date" with Langford, who is taped to a chair in her parents' Manhattan townhouse. Langford convinces her to untie him under the guise of seduction, at which time he seizes the gun, only to find it is a toy gun loaded with faulty pellets. He slaps Masha to subdue her and flees downtown, where he angrily sees Rupert's full stand-up routine on a series of television display sets.


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: Meanwhile, Rupert's act is well received by the studio audience. In his act, he describes his troubled upbringing while simultaneously laughing at his circumstances. Rupert then closes his act by confessing to the audience that he kidnapped Langford to break into show business. As the audience still laughs (thinking it's still a part of his act), Rupert responds by saying: "Tomorrow, you'll know I wasn't kidding and you'll all think I'm crazy. But I figure it this way: better to be king for a night than a schmuck for a lifetime." Having shown the broadcast to Rita at her bar, he proudly submits to his arrest as the FBI agents profess distaste for his jokes.


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: The film ends with a news report of Rupert's crime, his six-year prison sentence and parole after two years, set to a montage of storefronts stocking his "long-awaited" autobiography, "King for a Night", which states that Rupert still considers Langford his friend and mentor and that he is currently weighing several "attractive offers," including comedy tours and a film adaptation of his memoirs. Rupert later takes the stage for a television special with a live audience, where an announcer enthusiastically introduces him as the King of Comedy while Rupert himself prepares to address his audience. The announcer repeats "Ladies and gentlemen, Rupert Pupkin", or a variation of this, seven times.


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: The Clash – members Mick Jones, Joe Strummer, Paul Simonon, their manager Kosmo Vinyl and the musicians Ellen Foley and Don Letts appeared as "Street Scum".<ref name="http://dangerousminds.net"></ref>


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio played an extra in a crowd scene and was not listed in the credits of the film.


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: After "Raging Bull" was completed, Scorsese had thought about retiring from feature films to make documentaries instead because he felt "unsatisfied" and had not found his "inner peace" yet. However, he was keen to do a pet project of his, "The Last Temptation of Christ", and wanted De Niro to play Jesus Christ. De Niro was not interested and preferred their next collaboration to be a comedy. He had purchased the rights of a script by film critic Paul D. Zimmerman.<ref name="Baxter pp.219/20">Baxter, John "De Niro A Biography" pp. 219/20.</ref> Michael Cimino was first proposed as director but eventually withdrew from the project because of the extended production of "Heaven's Gate".


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: Bob Fosse briefly considered directing the film and suggested Andy Kaufman as Rupert Pupkin, Sandra Bernhard as Masha and Sammy Davis Jr. as Jerry Langford. Ultimately, Fosse passed on the film in favor of directing "Star 80" instead. Scorsese pondered whether he could face shooting another film, particularly with a looming strike by the Writers Guild of America. Producer Arnon Milchan knew he could do the project away from Hollywood interference by filming entirely on location in New York and deliver it on time with the involvement of a smaller film company.


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: After such a strong critical appreciation for the way in which Scorsese had shot "Raging Bull", the director felt that "The King of Comedy" needed more of a raw cinematic style, one of which would take its cues from early silent cinema, using more static camera shots, and fewer dramatic close-ups. Scorsese has noted that Edwin S. Porter's 1903 film "Life of an American Fireman" had greatly influenced "The King of Comedy"'s visual style.


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: De Niro prepared for Rupert Pupkin's role by developing a "role reversal" technique, consisting of chasing down his own autograph-hunters, stalking them and asking them many questions. As Scorsese remembered, he even agreed to meet and talk with one of his longtime stalkers:The guy was waiting for him with his wife, a shy suburban woman who was rather embarrassed by the situation. He wanted to take him to dinner at their house, a two-hour drive from New York. After he had persuaded him to stay in Manhattan, [De Niro] asked him, 'Why are you stalking me? What do you want?' He replied, 'To have dinner with you, have a drink, chat. My mom asked me to say hi.'De Niro also spent months watching stand-up comedians at work to get the rhythm and timing of their performances right. Fully in phase with his character, he went as far as declining an invitation to dinner from Lewis because he was "supposed to be at his throat and ready to kill him for [his] chance".


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: In the biography/overview of his work, "Scorsese on Scorsese", the director had high praise for Jerry Lewis, stating that during their first conversation before shooting, Lewis was extremely professional and assured him before shooting that there would be no ego clashes or difficulties. Scorsese said he felt Lewis' performance in the film was vastly underrated and deserved more acclaim.


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: According to an interview with Lewis in the February 7, 1983, edition of "People" magazine, he claimed that Scorsese and De Niro employed method acting tricks, including making a slew of anti-Semitic epithets during the filming to "pump up Lewis's anger". Lewis described making the film as a pleasurable experience and noted that he got along well with both Scorsese and De Niro. Lewis said he was invited to collaborate on certain aspects of the script dealing with celebrity life. He suggested an ending in which Rupert Pupkin kills Jerry, but was turned down. As a result, Lewis thought that the film, while good, did not have a "finish".


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: In an interview for the DVD, Scorsese stated that Jerry Lewis suggested that the brief scene where Jerry Langford is accosted by an old lady for autographs, who screams, "You should only get cancer", when Lewis politely rebuffs her, was based on a real-life incident that happened to Lewis. Scorsese said Lewis directed the actress playing the old lady to get the timing right.


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: At the time he wrote his script, Paul D. Zimmerman was inspired by a David Susskind show on autograph hunters and an "Esquire" article on a fanatical Johnny Carson follower. Scorsese first became aware of Zimmerman's script after it was brought to him by Robert De Niro in 1974, but declined the project citing that he felt no personal connection with it. Michael Cimino was attached to direct but his involvement with the script fell through when he left the project to direct "Heaven's Gate". Prompted by the alienation he felt from his growing celebrity status, and De Niro's insistence that the film could be made "real fast", and that it would be a "New York movie" Scorsese's interest in the project was rekindled.


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: Scorsese's first choice for talk show host Jerry Langford was Johnny Carson, in what would have been his only acting role in a film. Carson refused the role, saying "you know that one take is enough for me". The entire Rat Pack was also considered—specifically Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin—before a decision was made to select Martin's old partner, Jerry Lewis.


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: Arnon Milchan suggested shooting begin a month earlier than scheduled to avoid possible work stoppage from the DGA strike. Furthermore, Scorsese was not in good health. The film was shot over a twenty-week period, with Scorsese shooting from 4 pm to 7 pm every day.


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: Scorsese had suffered from poor health both before and during the film's production. He had previously worked on three films close together and not long after, found himself hospitalized due to exhaustion and pneumonia. He had not recovered when shooting began. The intensive filming schedule meant Scorsese could spend the remainder of his time recuperating.


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: Robbie Robertson produced the music for the film's soundtrack and contributed his first original work after leaving The Band entitled "Between Trains". This song, a tribute to a member of the production staff who had suddenly died, is on the soundtrack album but not in the movie itself.


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: "The King of Comedy" soundtrack is a mix of popular music and thematic orchestral scoring by composer Bob James. The soundtrack includes songs from artists such as B.B. King, Van Morrison and Ray Charles. This kind of hybridization of pop and scored music would later be used in "Gangs of New York", "The Aviator" and "The Departed".


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: A soundtrack album was released on vinyl and cassette by Warner Bros. Records in 1983. The soundtrack was finally released on compact disc by Wounded Bird Records in 2016.


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: "The King of Comedy" was released on Region 1 DVD on December 12, 2002, and on Region 2 on April 19, 2004.


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: A digital restoration of the movie was presented on April 27, 2013, as the closing film of De Niro's Tribeca Film Festival. This latest version was produced from the film's original camera negatives and features a restored soundtrack. While the restored film was scheduled to be released onto Blu-ray on October 29, 2013, the 30th Anniversary home media release was ultimately delayed for a release date of March 25, 2014.


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: In 2015, it was announced a stage musical for Broadway was to be made with Stephen Trask writing the music and lyrics, and a book by Chris D'Arienzo.


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: Although the film was well received by critics, it bombed at the box office. De Niro said that the film "maybe wasn't so well received because it gave off an aura of something that people didn't want to look at or know". , 90% of critics have given the film a positive review on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes based on 67 critic reviews, with an average rating of 8.30/10. The site's critics consensus states, "Largely misunderstood upon its release, "The King of Comedy" today looks eerily prescient, and features a fine performance by Robert De Niro as a strangely sympathetic psychopath." Metacritic gives it a weighted average score of 73 out of 100 based on 13 critic reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: "Time Out" called it "Creepiest movie of the year in every sense, and one of the best". Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film three out of four stars, writing, ""The King of Comedy" is one of the most arid, painful, wounded movies I've ever seen. It's hard to believe Scorsese made it". He also wrote, "Scorsese doesn't want laughs in this movie, and he also doesn't want release. The whole movie is about the inability of the characters to get any kind of a positive response to their bids for recognition." He concluded the film "is not, you may already have guessed, a fun movie. It is also not a bad movie. It is frustrating to watch, unpleasant to remember, and, in its own way, quite effective."


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: Dave Kehr of the "Chicago Reader" gave the film a favorable review, calling it "clearly an extension of "Taxi Driver" and the "uncenteredness of the film is irritating, though it's irritating in an ambitious, risk-taking way". Joyce Millman of "Salon" called it "Martin Scorsese's second-least popular movie, after "The Last Temptation of Christ". Which is a shame, because it's Scorsese's second-greatest film, after "Taxi Driver"". However, not all critics gave the film positive reviews. Adam Smith of "Empire Magazine" called it "Neither funny enough to be an effective black comedy nor scary enough to capitalise on its thriller/horror elements".


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: David Ehrenstein, author of "The Scorsese Picture", noted the mixed response of the film in his 1983 review. He stated that "The King of Comedy" "cuts too close to the bone for either large-scale mass audience approval or unanimous mainstream critical acclaim". He believed that the film presented a very critical portrayal of the Reagan administration in contrast to other films made during the administration's early years (although the script was written well before Reagan's election, and shooting began less than five months after Reagan took office). "At a time when the film world piles on simple-minded sentiment in thick gooey gobs, a picture like "The King of Comedy" appears a frontal assault. The triumph of the 'little guy' is revealed to be nothing more than lumpen neo-Fascist blood lust."


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: Pauline Kael of "The New Yorker" was one of the critics who disliked the film, describing the character of Rupert Pupkin as "Jake LaMotta without fists". She went on to write that "De Niro in disguise denies his characters a soul. De Niro's 'bravura' acting in "Mean Streets, Taxi Driver" and "New York, New York" collapsed into 'anti-acting' after he started turning himself into repugnant flesh effigies of soulless characters ... Pupkin is a nothing." Scorsese says that "people were confused with "King of Comedy" and saw Bob as some sort of mannequin". Scorsese has called De Niro's role as Rupert Pupkin his favorite of all their collaborations.


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: Sandra Bernhard, who plays Masha in the film, indicated in a 2013 interview that Jack Black was interested in a remake. However, she dismissed the idea, saying it was "too late" to do it. Actor Steve Carell and director Bennett Miller, both black comedy fans, cited "The King of Comedy" as a personal favorite and inspiration to shape the sociopath character of John E. du Pont in "Foxcatcher".


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: The film's reputation has grown over time, with some ranking it among Scorsese's finest films. The screenplay for the 2019 film "Joker", written by director Todd Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver, is frequently cited by Phillips as drawing inspiration from both "The King of Comedy" and Scorsese's 1976 film "Taxi Driver".


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: Film scholar David Bordwell, writing in "Film Viewer's Guide", mentioned the (un)reality of the ending as a topic for debate, as there is no definitive answer as to whether the ending is reality or fantasy. By the end of the film the line between fantasy and reality is blurred for the audience as well as the character. Scorsese does not offer a clear answer but forces each viewer to make up his or her own mind as to how to interpret the film.


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: In his commentary on The Criterion Collection DVD of "Black Narcissus", Scorsese stated that Michael Powell's films influenced "The King of Comedy" in its conception of fantasy. Scorsese said that Powell always treated fantasy as no different than reality, and so made fantasy sequences as realistic as possible. Scorsese suggests that Rupert Pupkin's character fails to differentiate between his fantasies and reality in much the same way. Scorsese sought to achieve the same with the film so that, in his words, the "fantasy is more real than reality".


title: The King of Comedy (film)

text: Rupert Pupkin has been compared to Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver": both characters have serious issues with reality testing that is drawing the line between outer objective and inner subjective reality. In her review, entertainment columnist Marilyn Beck approved Johnny Carson's refusal to participate in "The King of Comedy", supposedly because he feared the film could inspire psychopaths like John Hinckley. Beck considered "The King of Comedy" even more dangerous than "Taxi Driver" due to its lack of blood and gore, as well as the fact that viewers could easily identify with De Niro. In a documentary featured in the first DVD release of the film, Scorsese himself acknowledged the connection between the two characters: ""Taxi Driver". Travis. Rupert. The isolated person. Is Rupert more violent than Travis? Maybe."


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: Brendan Rodgers (born 26 January 1973) is a Northern Irish professional football manager and former player who is the manager of Premier League club Leicester City.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: Rodgers began his career as a defender at Ballymena United, where he stayed until he was signed by Reading at the age of 18, although a genetic knee condition forced him to retire at age 20. He remained at Reading as a coach and then academy director, and continued to play non-league football at Newport, Witney Town and Newbury Town for several years. After a period travelling around Spain to study coaching methods, he was invited by José Mourinho to leave Reading and join Chelsea as youth manager in 2004, later being promoted to reserve manager in 2006.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: In 2008, he was appointed manager of Watford, where he remained until he accepted an offer to become manager of his former club Reading in 2009. He left the club by mutual consent after some disappointing results six months later. He returned to management with Swansea City in 2010, leading the club to promotion to the Premier League, the first Welsh team to do so, before guiding them to finish 11th the following season. On 1 June 2012, Rodgers accepted an offer to become the new manager of Liverpool, whom he led to runners-up position in the league in the 2013–14 season before his dismissal in October 2015. He became manager of Celtic in May 2016 and led Celtic to an undefeated domestic season in his first year, and trebles in both of his first two seasons. He left Celtic for Leicester City in February 2019, winning the 2021 FA Cup in his second full season.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: Rodgers was born in the seaside village of Carnlough in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. His father Malachy was a painter and decorator, while his mother Christina was a volunteer for the Irish charity Trócaire. Rodgers is the eldest of five boys. His younger brother Malachy became a well-known country-and-western singer locally, and is now pursuing a career in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. He grew up as a supporter of Sheffield Wednesday and Celtic.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: Rodgers was brought up a Catholic. He attended St John's Catholic Primary School in Carnlough, and then moved on to St Patrick's College in Ballymena until the age of 16. His mother died in 2010 at the age of 53, and in September 2011 Rodgers was by his father's side when he died of cancer, aged 59.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: As a teenager, Rodgers represented Northern Ireland at schoolboy level, notably playing against Brazil in 1988. He began his senior career as a defender for Ballymena United, his local team, in 1987. Three years later, at the age of 18, he was signed by Reading where he played in the reserves. His professional playing career was ended when he was 20, due to a genetic knee condition. Following this enforced retirement, Rodgers spent several years playing in non-league football for Newport (IOW), Witney Town and Newbury Town, while remaining as a youth coach at Reading. He found employment at John Lewis to support his young family.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: Rodgers spent a large amount of time travelling around Spain studying different coaching methods, and was eventually invited by manager José Mourinho to leave his role of academy director at Reading and join the Chelsea Academy as their head youth coach in 2004 after a recommendation by Mourinho's assistant and future Premier League manager Steve Clarke. Rodgers was promoted to reserve team manager two years later, and was kept in that position by subsequent Chelsea managers Avram Grant and Luiz Felipe Scolari.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: On 24 November 2008, Rodgers left Chelsea to become the manager of Championship club Watford. Rodgers won only two of his first ten league games as manager, leaving Watford in the relegation zone by January. Watford's form dramatically improved, however, and Rodgers was able to guide them to finish 13th, avoiding relegation.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: Weeks after guaranteeing Watford's survival, and following the resignation of Steve Coppell as Reading manager, Rodgers quickly became the favourite to succeed him and rejoin his old club. He initially distanced himself from reports linking him with the job, saying that his "concentration (is) fully on Watford". However, he eventually agreed a deal to become the new manager of Reading on 5 June 2009, after a compensation package worth an initial £500,000 with Watford was agreed, which later rose to £1 million. The Watford Supporters' Trust stated that Rodgers' reputation was "severely damaged" in the eyes of the supporters as a result of the move, but they nevertheless "thanked (Rodgers) for his efforts last season" and "(wished) him well for the future". On 11 August, Rodgers got his first win as Reading manager with a 5–1 win over League Two side Burton Albion in the first round of the League Cup. Despite a good start in the league, a disappointing string of results followed, and Rodgers left Reading by mutual consent on 16 December, just over six months after his arrival, with Reading one place above relegation in the Championship.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: Rodgers accepted an offer to become the manager of Championship side Swansea City on 16 July 2010. Prior to this appointment, he had been asked to join the coaching staff at Manchester City under manager Roberto Mancini. His beginning as Swansea manager was very successful, leading to Rodgers being named the Championship Manager of the Month for February 2011 after Swansea won five out of the six league games they played that month, while keeping four clean sheets. By 25 April 2011, Rodgers had managed to comfortably secure Swansea City's place in the 2011 Championship Play-Offs for promotion into the Premier League, with a convincing 4–1 victory over Ipswich Town at the Liberty Stadium.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: On 16 May 2011, Rodgers led Swansea to the 2011 Championship Play-Off final as the favourites after defeating underdogs Nottingham Forest over two legs in the semi-final. He faced his old club Reading in the final at Wembley Stadium on 30 May 2011, which Swansea won 4–2 thanks in part to a hat-trick from Scott Sinclair, meaning Swansea became the first Welsh team ever to gain promotion to the Premier League. Rodgers was praised by the media and supporters for consoling Reading manager Brian McDermott and owner John Madejski before receiving the trophy.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: Rodgers' first win as a Premier League manager came on 17 September 2011, when Swansea beat West Bromwich Albion 3–0 at the Liberty Stadium. Despite many predicting before the season began that Swansea were favourites to be relegated, their debut season proved very impressive, as they picked up points against Liverpool, Newcastle United, Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea, keeping them well above the relegation zone. In January 2012, Swansea claimed their first away win of the season at Aston Villa, a month which also saw them beat Arsenal 3–2 at home and hold Chelsea to a 1–1 draw. This saw Rodgers earn his first Premier League Manager of the Month award. In February, Rodgers signed a new three-and-a-half-year contract to keep him at the club until July 2015.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: On 1 June 2012, Rodgers was unveiled as the new Liverpool manager on a three-year contract, following the departure of Kenny Dalglish two weeks prior. Rodgers' appointment was immediately endorsed by former colleague and Real Madrid manager José Mourinho. In July 2012, Rodgers wrote an open letter to the Swansea City supporters, thanking both the staff and supporters for his time at the club, and wishing them well for the future. Days later, Rodgers held his first training session at Melwood as the squad reported back for pre-season training.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: On 2 August 2012, Rodgers oversaw his first competitive game as Liverpool manager, a 1–0 win in the UEFA Europa League against Belarusian club Gomel, and won his first home game in charge in the second leg one week later. In his first league game as manager on 18 August, Liverpool lost 3–0 against West Brom at The Hawthorns. His first win in the league came against Norwich City at Carrow Road, Liverpool winning 5–2. On 31 October, Rodgers welcomed his former club Swansea to Anfield in the fourth round of the League Cup, a match Liverpool lost 3–1. On 6 December, Liverpool defeated Udinese 1–0 away in the Europa League to qualify for the round of 32 as group winners.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: On 27 January 2013, Liverpool were knocked out of the FA Cup in the fourth round, surprisingly losing 3–2 to League One team Oldham Athletic. Liverpool finished in seventh position in the Premier League in his first season in charge, one position higher than the previous season.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: At the start of the 2013–14 season, Rodgers was named the Premier League Manager of the Month for August 2013 as Liverpool won their first three league games of the season. In January 2014, he was fined £8,000 after making comments about referee Lee Mason after a 2–1 loss to Manchester City in December 2013. He was later named Manager of the Month for the second time that season for March 2014, after Liverpool won all five of their games that month to go top of the Premier League.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: A run of 11-straight wins for Liverpool left them five points clear at the top of the Premier League with just three matches to play. However, they then suffered a 2–0 home defeat to Chelsea on 27 April. This result handed the advantage to Manchester City in the title race. In their next game away to Crystal Palace on 5 May, Liverpool led 3–0 with 11 minutes to go, but the game finished 3–3. Liverpool ended the season as Premier League runners-up, two points behind champions Manchester City.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: Liverpool scored 101 league goals in the season, the club's most since the 1895–96 season and the third-highest in Premier League history. Later that month, Rodgers was named the LMA Manager of the Year, becoming the first Liverpool manager to win the accolade in its 20-year history. On 26 May 2014, Rodgers signed a new four-year contract at Liverpool.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: Liverpool were eliminated from the 2014–15 UEFA Champions League after drawing against Basel in their final group match, dropping into the Europa League. "The Reds" were subsequently knocked out in the Europa League round of 32 after losing 4–5 on penalties to Turkish side Beşiktaş. On 19 April 2015, Liverpool were defeated by Aston Villa in the FA Cup semi-final. Liverpool finished the season with a 6–1 defeat to Stoke, finishing sixth in the Premier League. This meant Rodgers became the first Liverpool manager since the 1950s not to win a trophy after three seasons in charge. Despite this, Rodgers received the backing of Liverpool's owners.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: On 4 October 2015, Liverpool played their 225th Merseyside derby against Everton with the game ending again in a 1–1 draw. This was the fifth time in Liverpool's previous six games that they had taken a 1–0 lead, then to have the game end in a 1–1 draw; while they had just one win in their previous nine games. Just one hour after the game, Rodgers was sacked, leaving Liverpool in tenth place after eight matches played. Later, it became known that the decision to sack him had already been made prior to the match against Everton. The following day, Rodgers released a statement through the League Managers Association stating, "I am, of course, incredibly disappointed to be leaving... [but] it has been both an honour and a privilege to manage one of the game's great clubs."


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: Rodgers' signings for Liverpool included James Milner, Roberto Firmino, Philippe Coutinho, Adam Lallana, Joe Gomez, Dejan Lovren, Divock Origi and Mario Balotelli.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: Rodgers was appointed manager of Scottish Premiership champions Celtic on a 12-month rolling contract on 20 May 2016, following the exit of Ronny Deila. Upon his arrival in Glasgow, Rodgers spoke of his admiration for the late Tommy Burns, the former Celtic player and manager who was in charge of Reading when Rodgers began his coaching career.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: On 12 July, in his first competitive game in charge, Celtic lost 1–0 away to Gibraltar's Lincoln Red Imps in the first leg of their second qualifying round of the 2016–17 Champions League. He said of the surprise result, "There is obvious disappointment. There is no embarrassment." Celtic overcame their one-goal deficit with a 3–0 win at Celtic Park. On 23 August 2016, Celtic qualified for the group stage of the 2016–17 Champions League for the first time in three years after a 5–4 aggregate victory over Hapoel Be'er Sheva. In the first game of the group stage, 13 September 2016, Rodgers suffered a 7–0 defeat against Barcelona at Camp Nou, this was Brendan Rodgers' heaviest defeat and the worst result for Celtic in European competition.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: On 27 November 2016, Rodgers won his first trophy as a manager as Celtic beat Aberdeen 3–0 in the final of the Scottish League Cup. The win also gave Celtic their 100th major trophy.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: On 31 December 2016, Rodgers became the first manager in Celtic history to win his opening three games against Rangers. This victory meant Celtic went 19 points clear, with a game in hand, in the 2016–17 Scottish Premiership table. It also secured Celtic their 5th consecutive league victory, 58 points from a possible 60, and stretched their unbeaten run in domestic football to 24 games.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: On 2 April 2017, Celtic defeated Hearts 5–0 to secure the club's sixth consecutive league title, with eight games to spare. Five days later, Rodgers signed a new four-year contract with Celtic.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: As Celtic's unbeaten domestic run continued, they subjected Rangers to their heaviest defeat at Ibrox since 1915, thrashing their rivals 5–1 on 29 April. Celtic's 2–0 win over Hearts on 21 May saw them finish 30 points ahead of second-placed Aberdeen in the league with a record 106 points, and the team become the first Scottish side to complete a top-flight season undefeated since 1899. On 27 May 2017, Celtic defeated Aberdeen 2–1 to win the Scottish Cup, securing a domestic treble for the fourth time in their history, and ending the 2016–17 season unbeaten in all domestic competitions.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: On 4 November 2017, Rodgers guided Celtic to a 4–0 victory over St Johnstone. This victory meant Celtic were unbeaten for their last 63 domestic games. The victory also meant they surpassed the 100-year British-held recorded for consecutive domestic games undefeated, which was also held by Willie Maley's Celtic team, set in 1917 at 62. On 26 November 2017, Rodgers won his fourth trophy in a row as a manager as Celtic beat Motherwell 2–0 in the 2017 Scottish League Cup Final. Rodgers became the first manager in the club's history to win his first four domestic trophies and also stretch the unbeaten domestic record to 65 games. This unbeaten run finally ended after 69 games, ending with a 4–0 loss to Hearts.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: On 29 April 2018, Rodgers secured his second and Celtic's seventh consecutive league title with a 5–0 win against Rangers at Celtic Park. This win also extended Celtic's unbeaten run against Rangers to 12 games. The season ended with Rodgers winning the first 'Double Treble' (a treble in two consecutive seasons) in Scottish football history with a 2–0 Scottish Cup Final win over Motherwell on 19 May 2018.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: Rodgers said that he turned down an approach from a Chinese club during the summer of 2018. He told BBC Scotland: "With China it's big money, but I've found happiness here." After failing to qualify for the Champions League, Celtic qualified in second place from the group stage of the UEFA Europa League. They were knocked out by Valencia in the round of 32, 3–0 on aggregate. Celtic won the Scottish League Cup in December 2018, Rodgers' seventh successive trophy with the club. In February 2019, with Celtic leading the Premiership by eight points, Rodgers departed Celtic, joining English Premier League club Leicester City.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: In February 2019, Rodgers was appointed manager of Leicester City, following the sacking of Claude Puel. Rodgers' first game in charge of "The Foxes" was on 3 March 2019 away against former club Watford. The game ended in a 2–1 defeat, with Andre Gray scoring a 92nd-minute winner for "the Hornets". In Rodgers' home debut, his second game in charge, Leicester won 3–1 over struggling Fulham. Striker Jamie Vardy scored his 100th goal for the club in the match.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: On 6 December 2019, Rodgers signed a contract extension keeping him at the club until 2025. At the point of signing the deal, his team had recorded 7 wins in a row and sat second in the table after 15 Premier League games. In his first full season, Rodgers guided Leicester to fifth place and therefore qualifying for the UEFA Europa League group stage.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: They started the 2020–21 season strongly, beating Manchester City 5–2 away from home on 27 September 2020, meaning that Rodgers is the first manager whose team have scored 5 goals against a team managed by Pep Guardiola. In Europe, Leicester managed to win the Europa League group with Braga, AEK Athens and Zorya Luhansk to progress to the round of 16, but they were eliminated by Slavia Prague after a 0–0 away draw in Czech Republic and a 0–2 home loss.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: On 15 May 2021, he led Leicester City to win the first FA Cup title in their history, after a 1–0 win over Chelsea in the final. The end of the season in the league saw a fierce battle between Leicester, Chelsea and Liverpool for the remaining UEFA Champions League spots. Despite being in third place for most of the season, a 1–2 loss to Chelsea in the penultimate round saw Leicester drop to 5th place after Liverpool's 3–0 defeat of Burnley, with Leicester and Liverpool tied on points and Chelsea up in third via a solitary point. Despite Chelsea's 1–2 loss against Aston Villa giving them a chance to a fourth-place finish, Leicester couldn't take advantage due to a dramatic 2–4 loss to Tottenham Hotspur after maintaining a 2–1 lead until Kasper Schmeichel's own goal in the 76th minute, coupled with a brace from Gareth Bale. Thus, Leicester once again finished fifth, qualifying for the Europa League.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: Rodgers believes in his teams keeping possession of the ball and playing a flowing passing and attacking game with the ball always moving; defensively, he likes his team to put a lot of pressure on the opposing team.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: His Liverpool team during the 2013–14 season interchanged from 4–5–1 to 3–5–2 to 4–4–2 to 4–3–3 to a diamond formation. Steven Gerrard described Rodgers' one-on-one management as the best he had seen.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: Rodgers separated from his wife, Susan, in the summer of 2014; the couple divorced in December 2015. They have two children – a son, Anton, also a footballer, and a daughter, Mischa. Rodgers got engaged to Charlotte Searle in February 2016, and they married in June 2017. He is a boyhood Celtic fan. On 6 March 2019, thieves broke into his home in Glasgow, stealing family possessions and medals he won at Celtic.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: In June 2011, Rodgers joined a team representing the Football League to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in aid of Marie Curie Cancer Care in honour of his mother – who died in 2010 – and his father – who died of cancer in 2011. In June 2014, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree by the University of Ulster.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: Rodgers speaks Spanish and Italian. His nickname is "Buck Rodgers", after the comic strip character Buck Rogers.


title: Brendan Rodgers

text: In May 2020, Rodgers said that he and his wife had tested positive for COVID-19 in March the same year after showing symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic – both of them made full recoveries. Rodgers likened his breathing difficulties to the altitude when he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. The couple endured losses in smell, taste, and strength for three weeks before being tested positive.


title: Chateaubriand (dish)

text: Chateaubriand (sometimes called chateaubriand steak) is a dish that traditionally consists of a large front cut fillet of tenderloin grilled between two lesser pieces of meat that are discarded after cooking. While the term originally referred to the preparation of the dish, Auguste Escoffier named the specific front cut of the tenderloin the Chateaubriand.


title: Chateaubriand (dish)

text: In the gastronomy of the 19th century the steak for Chateaubriand could be cut from the sirloin, and served with a reduced sauce named Chateaubriand sauce or a similar, that was prepared with white wine and shallots moistened with demi-glace, and mixed with butter, tarragon, and lemon juice. It was also traditionally served with mushrooms.


title: Chateaubriand (dish)

text: A common practice in naming dishes is to name them after an individual. For example, the sandwich — two slices of bread with something between — was named after John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich. Similar examples include carpaccio named after the Italian painter Vittore Carpaccio, and Chateaubriand named after the French author François-René de Chateaubriand. The dish has retained its capitalization while the other examples no longer retain their surname origins.


title: Chateaubriand (dish)

text: There are several stories about what the original dish was. Dishes are often invented by famous chefs. With French origins, the "Larousse Gastronomique" indicates that the dish "Chateaubriand" was created by the namesake's personal chef, Montmireil, for the Vicomte François-René de Chateaubriand, at that time (1822) Ambassador of France in England. Montmireil also created what was originally called "pudding a la Chateaubriand" but would eventually be called simply "pudding diplomate". An alternative spelling of the Vicomte's surname is "Châteaubriant", which term the "Dictionnaire de l'Académie des Gastronomes" gives as the source of the beef-cattle bred at the town of Châteaubriant, in Loire-Atlantique, France.


title: Chateaubriand (dish)

text: Originally the term itself was applied to the manner of preparation of the meat; however, by the 1870s at its introduction to the English, the term was transferred to the steak or cut of meat itself. Steak originally called "filet de bœuf" was now served as Chateaubriand. Montmireil originally roasted the Chateaubriand between two lesser cuts of meat. This technique enhanced both flavor and juiciness of the steak.


title: Chateaubriand (dish)

text: New York's Delmonico's Restaurant opened in 1827 as a pastry shop by Giovani and Pietro Delmonico but quickly expanded in 1830 to a full French restaurant that was on a par with the restaurants of France. Louis Napoleon visited New York in 1837 and was a regular patron. Among the items on the first menu was "Beef tenderloin with sauce." In 1893, Charles Ranhofer, the former chef at Delmonico's Restaurant, described the exact cut of meat for his preparation method as being the center cuts of the beef tenderloin. This center loin is described by Ranhofer as having been given the name Chateaubriand. In this 1893 method, a twenty-ounce (pound and a quarter) tenderloin center is flattened to and broiled over a slow but steady fire for 16 minutes for exceptionally rare, 18 minutes for properly done, and 20 minutes for well done. The finished steak is served with maître d'hôtel butter or gravy.


title: Chateaubriand (dish)

text: French chef Georges Auguste Escoffier gave names to different steak cuts. "Tournedos" were the name given for the kernels of the fillet, cut into rounds. Escoffier states:


title: Chateaubriand (dish)

text: Chateaubriands are obtained from the centre of the trimmed fillet of beef, cut two or three times the thickness of an ordinary fillet steak. However, when it is to be cooked by grilling the Chateaubriand should not be more than 500 g ( 1 lb 2 oz) in weight as, if larger than this, the outside tends to become too dry and hard before the inside is properly cooked. In modern practice though, Chateaubriands are served with any of the sauces and garnishes suitable for Tournedos and fillet steaks.


title: Chateaubriand (dish)

text: While he gives the name to the cut of meat, Escoffier only mentions the Vicomte François-René de Chateaubriand as being the inventor of the sauce named after him. However, the Auguste Escoffier School of the Culinary Arts states:


title: Chateaubriand (dish)

text: Chateaubriand is actually a recipe which is usually grilled or broiled and served with Bearnaise and chateau potatoes, which are trimmed into olive shapes and sauteed in butter. It is normally cut from the center part of the tenderloin big enough for two people.


title: Chateaubriand (dish)

text: In the February edition of the periodical "Good Housekeeping" published in 1917, inside the article "The Plank versus the Platter" by Katherine Campion, the author states, "Until very recently, a Beefsteak Chateaubriand was always cooked and served on an oaken plank. But now the custom of broiling the steak and serving it from a silver platter has replaced the plank". The publication credits Vicomte François-René de Chateaubriand for originating the cooking method for his meats and game which were served with rich sauces and garnishes. Oak planks add a substantial amount of flavor to the meat and are practical for both hotel and home cooking. Planks were sold both plain and with silver tray stands for presentation. Some well constructed planks had carved grooves for the juices to channel into a shallow well. The author's instructions for preparation suggest thickly cut tenderloin, porterhouse, or rump steak. The meat is skewered into shape and broiled on one side. While the meat broils, the plank is placed into the hot oven to heat until smoking. When ready, remove the plank from the oven and butter. After the meat has cooked from 5 to 7 minutes, remove it from the broiler and place onto the plank, cooked side down. Mashed potatoes are then piped through a pastry bag with a rose tube directly onto the plank, surrounding the meat in a wavy border or other, more complicated, decoration. Stuffed bell peppers or, alternatively, stuffed tomatoes are arranged, one per person, pressed into the potato border. Sautéed mushrooms are added on top and the entire plank is placed back into a hot oven until the meat is cooked to liking and the potatoes are lightly browned and the vegetables tender. The meat is then seasoned with salt, pepper, and paprika with a little butter rubbed on the meat and a final garnishing with sprays of watercress is added.


title: Chateaubriand (dish)

text: By the 1950s in the United States Chateaubriand became a treat for upscale guests in Las Vegas, Nevada, eventually becoming a staple of the local supper clubs referred to as gourmet rooms that were found on and off the Las Vegas Strip. According to "Woman's Day" magazine in 1966, "A Chateaubriand steak in most modern restaurants is a thick slice of tenderloin, barded with beef fat or bacon, and broiled to the desired degree of doneness ("à point", as the French say), then served up with Chateaubriand Sauce."


title: Chateaubriand (dish)

text: In the 1985 book, "Contemporary Cooking", by James Charlton, the dish "Chateaubriand with Duchesse Potatoes" is prepared by broiling the steak until not quite done and then placing the nearly cooked steaks onto a plank surrounded with mushrooms, tomatoes, and piped duchess potatoes around the meat and vegetables and then placed back into the broiler for the steak to finish and the potatoes to lightly brown.


title: Citizenship

text: Citizenship is a "relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection".


title: Citizenship

text: Each state determines the conditions under which it will recognize persons as its citizens, and the conditions under which that status will be withdrawn. Recognition by a state as a citizen generally carries with it recognition of civil, political, and social rights which are not afforded to non-citizens.


title: Citizenship

text: In general, the basic rights normally regarded as arising from citizenship are the right to a passport, the right to leave and return to the country/ies of citizenship, the right to live in that country, and to work there.


title: Citizenship

text: Some countries permit their citizens to have multiple citizenships, while others insist on exclusive allegiance.


title: Citizenship

text: A person can be recognized or granted citizenship on a number of bases. Usually, citizenship based on circumstances of birth is automatic, but an application may be required.


title: Citizenship

text: Many thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben in his work extending the biopolitical framework of Foucault's History of Sexuality in "Homo Sacer" point to the concept of citizenship beginning in the early city-states of ancient Greece, although others see it as primarily a modern phenomenon dating back only a few hundred years and, for humanity, that the concept of citizenship arose with the first laws. "Polis" meant both the political assembly of the city-state as well as the entire society. Citizenship concept has generally been identified as a western phenomenon. There is a general view that citizenship in ancient times was a simpler relation than modern forms of citizenship, although this view has come under scrutiny. The relation of citizenship has not been a fixed or static relation but constantly changed within each society, and that according to one view, citizenship might "really have worked" only at select periods during certain times, such as when the Athenian politician Solon made reforms in the early Athenian state. Citizenship was also contingent on a variety of biopolitical assemblages, such as the bioethics of emerging Theo-Philosophical traditions. It was necessary to fit Aristotle's definition of the besouled (the animate) to obtain citizenship: neither the sacred olive tree nor spring would have any rights.


title: Citizenship

text: An essential part of the framework of Greco-Roman ethics is the figure of Homo Sacer or the bare life.


title: Citizenship

text: Historian Geoffrey Hosking in his 2005 "Modern Scholar" lecture course suggested that citizenship in ancient Greece arose from an appreciation for the importance of freedom. Hosking explained:


title: Citizenship

text: Slavery permitted slave-owners to have substantial free time and enabled participation in public life. Polis citizenship was marked by exclusivity. Inequality of status was widespread; citizens (πολίτης "politēs" < πόλις 'city') had a higher status than non-citizens, such as women, slaves, and resident foreigners (metics). The first form of citizenship was based on the way people lived in the ancient Greek times, in small-scale organic communities of the polis. Citizenship was not seen as a separate activity from the private life of the individual person, in the sense that there was not a distinction between public and private life. The obligations of citizenship were deeply connected to one's everyday life in the polis. These small-scale organic communities were generally seen as a new development in world history, in contrast to the established ancient civilizations of Egypt or Persia, or the hunter-gatherer bands


title: Citizenship

text: elsewhere. From the viewpoint of the ancient Greeks, a person's public life was not separated from their private life, and Greeks did not distinguish between the two worlds according to the modern western conception. The obligations of citizenship were deeply connected with everyday life. To be truly human, one had to be an active citizen to the community, which Aristotle famously expressed: "To take no part in the running of the community's affairs is to be either a beast or a god!" This form of citizenship was based on the obligations of citizens towards the community, rather than rights given to the citizens of the community. This was not a problem because they all had a strong affinity with the polis; their own destiny and the destiny of the community were strongly linked. Also, citizens of the polis saw obligations to the community as an opportunity to be virtuous, it was a source of honor and respect. In Athens, citizens were both rulers and ruled, important political and judicial offices were rotated and all citizens had the right to speak and vote in the political assembly.


title: Citizenship

text: In the Roman Empire, citizenship expanded from small-scale communities to the entirety of the empire. Romans realized that granting citizenship to people from all over the empire legitimized Roman rule over conquered areas. Roman citizenship was no longer a status of political agency, as it had been reduced to a judicial safeguard and the expression of rule and law. Rome carried forth Greek ideas of citizenship such as the principles of equality under the law, civic participation in government, and notions that "no one citizen should have too much power for too long", but Rome offered relatively generous terms to its captives, including chances for lesser forms of citizenship. If Greek citizenship was an "emancipation from the world of things", the Roman sense increasingly reflected the fact that citizens could act upon material things as well as other citizens, in the sense of buying or selling property, possessions, titles, goods. One historian explained:


title: Citizenship

text: Roman citizenship reflected a struggle between the upper-class patrician interests against the lower-order working groups known as the plebeian class. A citizen came to be understood as a person "free to act by law, free to ask and expect the law's protection, a citizen of such and such a legal community, of such and such a legal standing in that community". Citizenship meant having rights to have possessions, immunities, expectations, which were "available in many kinds and degrees, available or unavailable to many kinds of person for many kinds of reason". The law itself was a kind of bond uniting people. Roman citizenship was more impersonal, universal, multiform, having different degrees and applications.


title: Citizenship

text: During the European Middle Ages, citizenship was usually associated with cities and towns (see medieval commune), and applied mainly to middle-class folk. Titles such as burgher, grand burgher (German "Großbürger") and the bourgeoisie denoted political affiliation and identity in relation to a particular locality, as well as membership in a mercantile or trading class; thus, individuals of respectable means and socioeconomic status were interchangeable with citizens.


title: Citizenship

text: During this era, members of the nobility had a range of privileges above commoners (see aristocracy), though political upheavals and reforms, beginning most prominently with the French Revolution, abolished privileges and created an egalitarian concept of citizenship.


title: Citizenship

text: During the Renaissance, people transitioned from being subjects of a king or queen to being citizens of a city and later to a nation. Each city had its own law, courts, and independent administration. And being a citizen often meant being subject to the city's law in addition to having power in some instances to help choose officials. City dwellers who had fought alongside nobles in battles to defend their cities were no longer content with having a subordinate social status but demanded a greater role in the form of citizenship. Membership in guilds was an indirect form of citizenship in that it helped their members succeed financially. The rise of citizenship was linked to the rise of republicanism, according to one account, since independent citizens meant that kings had less power. Citizenship became an idealized, almost abstract, concept, and did not signify a submissive relation with a lord or count, but rather indicated the bond between a person and the state in the rather abstract sense of having rights and duties.


title: Citizenship

text: The modern idea of citizenship still respects the idea of political participation, but it is usually done through "elaborate systems of political representation at a distance" such as representative democracy. Modern citizenship is much more passive; action is delegated to others; citizenship is often a constraint on acting, not an impetus to act. Nevertheless, citizens are usually aware of their obligations to authorities and are aware that these bonds often limit what they can do.


title: Citizenship

text: From 1790 until the mid-twentieth century, United States law used racial criteria to establish citizenship rights and regulate who was eligible to become a naturalized citizen. The Naturalization Act of 1790, the first law in U.S. history to establish rules for citizenship and naturalization, barred citizenship to all people who were not of European descent, stating that "any alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, maybe admitted to becoming a citizen thereof."