There is a current revival of Black Consciousness, as political and student movements around the world – as well as academics and campaigners working in decolonization – reconfigure the continued struggle for socio-economic revolution. Yet the roots of Black Consciousness and its relation to other movements such as Black Lives Matter have only begun to be explored. Black Consciousness has deep connections to the struggle against apartheid. The Black Consciousness Reader is an essential collection of history, culture, philosophy and meaning of Black Consciousness by some of the thinkers, artists and activists who developed it in order to finally bring revolution to South Africa. A contribution to the world’s Black cultural archive, it examines how the proper acknowledgement of Blackness brings a greater love, a broader sweep of heroes and a wider understanding of intellectual and political influences. Although the legendary murdered activist Steve Biko is a strong figure within this history, the book documents many other significant international Black Consciousness personalities and focuses a predominantly African eye on Black Consciousness in politics, land, women, power, art, music and religion. Onkgopotse Tiro, Vuyelwa Mashalaba, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Assata Shakur, Marcus Garvey, Neville Alexander, Thomas Sankara, Malcolm X, Don Mattera, Keorapetse Kgositsile, W.E.B. DuBois, Walter Rodney, Mongane Wally Serote, Ready D and Zola are among the many bold minds included in this amalgam of facts, ideas and images.

During the mid-1960s to the late 1970s, black college students in South Africa became frustrated with apartheid, Bantu education policy, Bantustans, white liberal organizations, and European-branded Christianity. Their anger with white nationalism under apartheid caused them to mobilize, rise up, and fight against systemic oppression for their liberation. The timing was pregnant with purpose for the new generation of leaders to rise since the ANC and PAC were banned, creating an aboveground silence amongst black anti-apartheid revolutionaries. The reader will be lured into the struggle, blood, loss, tears, and victories of blacks fighting against apartheid in South Africa. Readers will learn about the ideology and way of life adopted by black youth known as black consciousness. The book analyzes how students became so devoted in their beliefs and application of the tenets of black consciousness that it was likened to the gospel message. It describes how the teachings of black consciousness were used as psychological weapons of war to liberate the minds of blacks, white liberals, and the white apartheid regime. The primary focus of this book is on the life, message, and journey of BC’s preeminent leader, Steve Biko, who led the radical movement along with his colleagues to empower his people and encourage the nation to seek and possess truer humanity. His message takes center stage while his life takes several unexpected turns as the system hunts him down. However, the most controversial yet surprising component of this work would be the comparison of Biko’s life and death with Jesus’s life and death at Calvary—from the cradle to the grave. Though Biko was not necessarily a professed Christian, his life’s work and message make chilling parallels to the life of Jesus Christ, which are captured here. This book is bound to awaken the soul and mind of the reader as they become raptured in the intersectionality of race, justice, and faith.

It's been forty years since Timothy Leary sat beside a swimming pool in Cuernavaca, Mexico, ingested several grams of the genus Stropharia cubensis, and experienced a dazzling display of visions that led him to herald the dawning of a New Age. And yet, from the counterculture movement of the 1960s, through the War on Drugs, to this very day, the world at large has viewed hallucinogens not as a gift but as a threat to society. In Hallucinogens, Charles Grob surveys recent writings from such important thinkers as Terence McKenna, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil, illustrating that a reevaluation of the social worth of hallucinogens-used intelligently-is greatly in order.

Lewis R. Gordon’s Fear of Black Consciousness is a groundbreaking account of Black consciousness by a leading philosopher. Fear of Black Consciousness is an original and a bold intervention in the cultural and political conversation about systemic racism. Lewis R. Gordon, one of the leading scholars of Black existentialism and antiblackness, takes the reader on a journey through the historical development of racialized blackness, the problems racialization produces, and the many creative responses from black and nonblack communities in contemporary struggles for dignity and freedom. As he skillfully navigates the difficult and traumatic terrain, Gordon cuts through the mist of white narcissism and the versions of consciousness it perpetuates. He illuminates the different forms of invisibility that define black life, and he exposes the bad faith at the heart of many discussions about race and racism, not only in North America but also across the globe, including in countries where discussants regard themselves as “colorblind.” Gordon reveals that these lies about race and its supposed irrelevance confer upon many white people an inherited sense of being extraordinary. More than being privileged or entitled, they act with a license to do as they please. But for many if not most blacks, living an ordinary life in a white-dominated society is an extraordinary achievement. Informed by Gordon’s upbringing in Jamaica and the Bronx, and taking as touchstones the pandemic and the uprisings against police violence, Fear of Black Consciousness is a groundbreaking book that positions Black consciousness as a political commitment and creative practice, richly layered through art, love, and revolutionary action. It is sure to provoke, challenge, and inspire.