Since the 1990s, “Black Power Studies” has expanded dramatically. Similarly, in the last two decades, a significant body of historical scholarship on the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa has been published. Still, the historiography of both fields is lacking an exploration of the development of a transnational diasporic consciousness and activism. Contributing to these two distinct, yet overlapping, bodies of scholarly intrigue, this study seeks to explore the contributions of important, yet under-acknowledged and under-researched, black liberation organizations in the United States and South Africa that were active during the turbulent decades between the mid-1960s and the early 1980s. Unapologetically Black sheds light on the black South African and black American cross fertilization and evolution of “black power” and “blackness” as a modern diasporic concept and identity. This study unearths how they defined and interpreted issues and agenda setting. Using four case studies, this work critically examines how they sought to address the plight and ameliorate the status of African descendants. With a focus on student activists and labor organizers, Unapologetically Black expands the tassel work of other scholars concerning the development of a shared global ‘Black’ identity and movement. The thrust of this study is the scrutinizing of documents produced by the four organizations in the case studies to distill commonly shared themes, strategies, and philosophers. This method, although comparative in nature, is a transnational approach to tracing shared ideas and the common identity construction project of Black Power and Black Consciousness by using these four specific case studies. In this sense, Unapologetically Black is transnational in orientation and a project in black global history. Unapologetically Black identifies and unpacks the perspective of ‘Blackness’ in these movements, analyzes the notion of ‘Black’ identity (or identities), and reveals how BP and BC adherents translated these identities into action. Pressing questions that are addressed in Unapologetically Black include: How do we explain the emergence and development of “black power” and “black consciousness” in these transnational locales? What are the deeper meanings and implications of “black power” and “black consciousness?” How did the members of the organizations conceptualize “black” and “blackness?” How did these organizations formulate and construct their political identities as well as use these identities in the broader global black freedom struggle? My argument is that based upon prior contact, a shared philosophical canon, and facing similar racialized oppression; Black Power and Black Conciousness adherents endeavored to create a new identity and culture to assert a personhood to seize self-determination. ‘Black’ and ‘Blackness’ were conceptualized as a militant revolutionary personhood and culture rooted in self-reliance and self-defense. To those ends, Black Power and Black Conciousness adherents created organizations and independent institutions to replace the state and/or fill the human and civil service needs the state was unwilling or incapable of filling. Unapologetically Black, in short, is about the evolution of ‘Black’ as an identity, political consciousness, cultural framework, and organizing tool.
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