Inflections of Stokely Carmichael
He probably didn’t invent it, but there is a certain cadence in the voice of Stokely Carmichael —the radical Black Power leader of the 1960s— that belongs to him in my mind as surely as Bo Diddley owns the hambone beat. And this particular cadence sometimes works its way into Obama’s speech. It did into Bill Clinton’s speech sometimes and in some situations. It will probably come out again and again in Obama’s, even though it’s probably a habit to avoid.
