Stokely Carmichael (June 29, 1941 – November 15, 1998), also known as Kwame Ture, was a Trinidadian-American black activist and leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee(SNCC) and the Black Panther Party. He later became a black separatist and a Pan-Africanist.

Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, Carmichael moved with his family to New York when he was eleven. He went to Howard University and joined SNCC. In his first year at the university he participated in the Freedom Rides of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and was arrested, spending time in jail. He would go on to be arrested many times, losing count at 32.

In 1969, Carmichael and his then-wife, the South African singer, Miriam Makeba, moved to Guinea, in West Africa, and he became an aide to Guinean prime minister, Ahmed Sékou Touré. There, in 1971, he wrote the 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. In 1978, he changed his name to Kwame Ture to honor African leaders Kwame Nkrumah and Ahmed Sékou Touré.

Stokely Carmichael is credited for coining the phrase institutional racism .Institutional racism (or structural racism or systemic racism) is a form of racism that occurs in institutions such as public bodies and corporations, including universities. In the late 1960s he defined the term as "the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin"