By MICHAEL 1. KAUFMAN

Kwame lure, the flamboyant civil rights leader known to most Ameri cans as Stokely Carmichael, died yesterday in Conakry, Guinea. He was 57 and is best remembered for his use of the phrase "black power," which in the mid-1960's ignited a white backlash and alarmed an older generation of civil rights leaders, in cluding the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The cause was prostate cancer, for which Mr. lure had been treated at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York in the last two years. He once said his cancer "was given to me by forces of American imperialism and others who con spired with them."

Mr. lure, who changed his name in 1978 to honor Kwame Nkrumah and Ahmed Sekou Toure, two African so cialist leaders who had befriended him, spent most of the last 30 years in Guinea, calling himself a revolu tionary and advocating a Pan-Afri can ideology that evoked few reso nances in the United States, or, for that matter, Africa.

Mr. lure's advocacy of Pan-Afri canism was the last phase in a politi cal evolution that passed from indif ference to the civil rights movement when he was a high school student to emergence as an effective nonviolent volunteer risking his life against seg regation to honorary prime minister of the Black Panther Party.

Though his active participation in the struggle for civil rights lasted barely a decade, he was a charismat ic figure in a turbulent time, when real violence and rhetoric escalated on both sides of the color line.

Stokely Carmichael was inspired to participate in the civil rights movement by the bravery of those blacks and whites who protested seg

It was June 16, 1966, and Mr. Car michael, a spellbinding orator, was addressing a crowd of 3,000 in a park in Greenwood, Miss. James Mer edith, who had integrated the Univer sity of Mississippi, was wounded on his solitary "Walk Against Fear" from Memphis to Jackson, and vol unteers were marching in his place. When they set up camp- in Green wood, Mr. Carmichael was arrested and his frustration was obvious.

"This is the 27th time," he said in disgust after his release. "We been saying 'Freedom' for six years," he continued, referring to the chant that movement protesters used as they stood up to racist politicians and hostile policemen pointing water hos es and unleashing snarling dogs. "What we are going to start saying now is 'Black Power!'"

The crowd quickly took up the phrase. "Black Power! "it repeated in a cry that would soon be echoed in communities from Oakland to New ark. But if Mr. Carmichael's call for black power galvanized many young blacks, it troubled others, who thought it sounded anti-white, pro vocative and violent. And it struck fear into many whites.

Adverse reaction was powerful and immediate. After the integra tionist, nonviolent speeches and ser mons of Dr. King and others, few Americans, white or black, were pre pared for the uncompromising de mands of black militants who rallied to Mr. Carmichael's cry.

Newspapers deplored the term and editorials warned of "reverse racism." Contributions to civil rights groups from sympathetic whites fell. Voting results that November in many state and local elections re flected a white backlash.

Displeased by the response of the A

Mr. Hamilton put it, "with riots and guns and 'burn, baby, burn.'"

Instead of young people singing "We Shall Overcome," new images of militant black men and women were being shown on television — black berets, raised fists, men with guns. And along with goals of social justice and integration came ideas of black separatism and power harking back to the black nationalism that had been preached in the 1920's by Marcus Garvey.

In 1966 and 1967 Mr. Carmichael lectured at campuses around the United States and traveled abroad to several countries, including North Vietnam, China and Cuba. He made perhaps his most provocative state ment in Havana. "We are preparing groups of urban guerrillas for our defense in the cities," he said. "It is going to be a fight to the death."

In 1967 a declining SNCC severed all ties with him. Soon after, he be came honorary prime minister of the Black Panthers, the ultra-militant urban organization begun by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. But he soon found himself embroiled with Pan ther leaders for opposing their deci sion to seek support among whites. He moved to Guinea, in West Africa, in 1969, saying, "America does not belong to the blacks," and calling on all black Americans to follow his example.

Even Black Panthers Not Radical Enough

In July 1969, three months after he moved to Africa, he made public a letter announcing his resignation from the Black Panther Party be cause of what he called "its dogmat ic party line favoring alliances with white radicals."