With the fiftieth anniversary of Steve Biko’s death at the hands of apartheid security police approaching, this is an opportune moment to reassess Black Consciousness (BC) histories and look forward. As a movement founded in the belly of the apartheid beast, with the older liberation movements like the ANC, PAC, and NEUM/UMSA mostly defeated and in exile, a new voice of Black activism needed to be formed.  Deborah Matshoba, Bokwe Mafuna, Steve Biko, Ranwedzi Nengwekhulu, Mapetla Mohapi, Maphiri Masekala and a host of others emerged to build a movement that inspired generations of activists to reimagine what a free South Africa, or Azania to some, would look like. Since the early 1970s, academics and activists from across southern Africa and the wider African World have researched, written, critiqued, praised, and at times downplayed this movement. Some even saw Biko’s assassination as a defeat of Black Consciousness and much literature after it even framed the late 1970s as the end of BC as an organized effective anti-apartheid movement. Newer research, however, has challenged this perspective and further extended our chronological analysis of BC. Most importantly, perhaps is that these new histories have attempted to reconstruct the history of the movement beyond individual personalities. 

            As co-editors of this special edition of the South African Historical Journal, we are calling for papers which offer new histories/insights of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM).  While literature has grown exponentially in the post-1994 moment, and become more insurgent since the mid-2000s, there is much left to explore about the movement in various geographic places, organizations, and groups of people. While explorations of the philosophical and theoretical interventions of Black Consciousness and Black Theology are welcome, this journal issue seeks historical analyses of the ways Black Consciousness was made real in the daily lives of the peoples of Azania and the broader global struggle against imperialism, capitalism and white supremacy.  What organizational expression, or lack thereof, did Black Consciousness have across South Africa/Azania?  What was its impact across southern Africa/Azania particularly in countries that today make up the Southern African Development Community (SADC)?  What happened to Black Consciousness activists in Europe, Australia/New Zealand, and North America?  What has life been like for BCM activists post-1994?  Questions such as these drive the research agenda of our special journal addition.  We especially welcome works by newer scholars who offer fresh historical perspectives but look forward to reading all submissions.  Topics of inquiry may include:       

• What did Black Consciousness mean to people living in different parts of South Africa outside of places like Durban, the Black colleges, and Johannesburg? What was the evolution of Indian and Coloured identities and conceptions of Blackness and what did BC look like in rural communities?
• How did miners, farmers, migrant workers, domestic laborers and other working people understand this new movement? 
• What was the impact of the Black Peoples Convention (BPC), the Literacy Programs, and other BC formations? 
• Investigations into the Southern African Students Movement (SnASM, to be distinguished from the South African Students Movement).
• What was the Soundtrack to Black Consciousness?  What sorts of music did people listen to, how did it influence their politics, and why?
• Histories of Black Consciousness outside of South Africa/Azania (southern Africa and other African countries, Europe, Australia, etc.). 
• Experiences, labors, and activism of Black women within Black Consciousness.
• Experiences and histories of LGBTQIAP+ peoples within Black Consciousness.
• Histories of Black Consciousness beyond 1977 (including community and political organizations stemming from Black Consciousness like AZAPO, the Umtapo Centre, etc.).
• What role/how has BCM praxis manifested itself in post-1994 South Africa/Azania?

Please send abstracts, of no more than 300 words, to Toivo Asheeke (Tasheeke@gsu.edu) and Leslie Hadfield (leslie_hadfield@byu.edu) no later than April 1, 2026. Full papers will be requested by August 1, 2026.