William Strickland, a longtime civil rights activist, scholar and friend of Malcolm X, has died

BOSTON (AP) – William Strickland, a longtime civil rights activist and supporter of the Black Power movement who worked with Malcolm X and other outstanding leaders within the Nineteen Sixties, has died. He was 87.

Strickland, whose death was confirmed on April 10 by a relative, first became involved in civil rights activities as a highschool student in Massachusetts. According to Peter Blackmer, a former student and now assistant professor of African and African American studies at Easter Michigan University, he was inspired by the writings of Richard Wright and James Baldwin while he was a student at Harvard.

“He made an incredible contribution to the black freedom movement that hasn’t really been recognized,” Blackmer said. “He argued that civil rights did not provide a sufficient framework for challenging the systems that were behind the oppression of Black communities throughout the diaspora.”

Strickland joined the Boston chapter of the Northern Student Movement within the early Nineteen Sixties, which provided support for sit-ins and other protests within the South. In 1963, he became the group’s executive director and from then on became a supporter of the Black Power movement, which emphasized racial pride, self-reliance and self-determination. Strickland also worked with Malcolm X, Baldwin and others in New York on rent strikes, school boycotts and protests against police brutality.

Amilcar Shabazz, a professor within the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of African American Studies on the University of Massachusetts, said Strickland followed a path very much like civil rights pioneer Du Bois.

“He went through a similar experience, committing himself to being an agent of social change in the world against the three main issues of the civil rights movement – ​​imperialism or militarism, racism and the economic injustice of plantation capitalism,” Shabazz said. “He committed himself against a triple evil. He did this through his learning, his teaching, his activism and the way he walked in the world.”

After the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Strickland co-founded the independent Black think tank, the Black World Institute. From its founding in 1969, it served for several years as a meeting place for black intellectuals.

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From there he joined the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he spent 40 years teaching political science and serving as director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Papers. He also traveled to Africa and the Caribbean, where, Shabazz said, he met with leaders of black liberation movements in Africa and Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Strickland has also written about racism and capitalism for several media outlets, including Essence and Souls, and has served as a consultant on several documentaries, including “Eyes on the Prize” and the PBS documentary “Malcolm X — Make It Plain,” Blackmer said.

Comparing him to Malcolm X, Blackmer said one of Strickland’s talents was the power to take necessary issues similar to “complex systems of oppression” and make them “understandable and accessible” to a popular audience.

“As a teacher, he taught us to think this way as students – so that we could understand and deconstruct racism, capitalism, imperialism, and at the same time be fearless and not be afraid to name the systems we deal with, a way to develop a strategy that challenges them challenge,” Blackmer said.

To those near him, Strickland was an mental giant with a sense of humor who was not afraid to “speak his mind.”

“He always spoke truth to power. He was that kind of guy,” said Earnestine Norman, his cousin, recalling their conversations, which frequently took place via the phone app FaceTime. They planned to go to Spain, where Strickland had a home before he began having health problems.

“He always spoke the truth about our culture, about being African in America and the struggles we faced,” she continued. “Sometimes it may need embarrassed some people or something, but his truth was his truth. His knowledge was his knowledge and he was not the kind of one who, as they are saying, bit his tongue.