HOWARD
UNIVERSITY
  
NEWS
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: ROBERT FRELOW
                      202-238-2332
Office of University Communications
MEDIA STATEMENT
HOWARD UNIVERSITY MOURNS DEATH, CELEBRATES LEGACY 
OF CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST KWAME TURE 

November 16--Howard University today mourns the death of Civil Rights Activist and alumnus Kwame Ture. Ture (nee Stokely Carmichael) was educated in New York City and came to Howard University in 1960, graduating in 1964. While at Howard, Ture became active in the Civil Rights movement, participating in sit-ins and picketing in Washington, D.C., as early as 1960.

Howard University President H. Patrick Swygert, who was a student at Howard with Ture, said "our generation has lost one of its strongest voices." In a statement issued today, he added: 
 
We join the many, many people touched by Kwame Ture 
in this moment of great sadness. It was on the campus of 
Howard University that Mr. Ture, then known as Stokely 
Carmichael, began his active participation in the struggle for 
the liberation of African people
Ture signed legal documents in June at his New York residence naming the University’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center (MSRC) as the repository for his personal papers and other archival materials chronicling his life and his career in the Civil Rights struggle. At that time, President Swygert said that the papers would "add to the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center a critical, first-hand look at a period in time that shaped the lives of African Americans and certainly all Americans--the Civil Rights Movement." 

Moorland-Spingarn Research Center Director Dr. Thomas Battle says that while Ture’s papers will add to the center’s internationally acclaimed holdings, "their real value is in the personal insight and the depth of perspective they will now provide to students and friends of the University."

In a statement released through his spokesman, Ture said he was "overwhelmed at the opportunity to have his works housed at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center."

Friends and supporters of Ture’s may forward works by or about Ture--his life and career---to MSRC by calling 202-806-7240.

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