Scholar fought for civil rights in U.S.
ACTIVISM
BOSTON • William Strickland, a longtime activist for civil rights and supporter of the Black Power movement who worked with Malcolm X and other prominent leaders in the 1960s, has died. He was 87.
Strickland, whose death April 10 was confirmed by a relative, first became active in civil rights as a high schooler in Massachusetts. He later became inspired by the writings of Richard Wright and James Baldwin while an undergraduate at Harvard University, according to Peter Blackmer, a former student who is now an assistant professor of Africology and African-American Studies at Eastern Michigan University.
“He made incredible contributions to the Black freedom movement that haven't really been appreciated,” Blackmer said.
Strickland joined the Boston chapter of the Northern Student Movement in the early 1960s, which provided support to sit-ins and other protests in the South. He became the group's executive director in 1963 and from there became a supporter of the Black Power movement, which emphasized racial pride, self-reliance and self-determination. Strickland also worked alongside Malcolm X, Baldwin and others in New York on rent strikes, school boycotts and protests against police brutality.
Amilcar Shabazz, a professor in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts, said Strickland followed a path very similar to civil rights pioneer Du Bois.
“He underwent a similar kind of experience to committing himself to being an agent of social change in the world against the three big issues of the civil rights movement — imperialism or militarism, racism and the economic injustice of plantation capitalism,” Shabazz said.
After the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Strickland co-founded the independent Black thinktank, the Institute of the Black World. From its start in 1969, it served for several years as the gathering place for Black intellectuals.
From there, he joined the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he spent 40 years teaching political science and serving as the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Papers. He also travelled to Africa and the Caribbean, where Shabazz said he met leaders of Black liberation movements in Africa and Cuban leader Fidel Castro.