“the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”
An original copy of Steve Biko’s text Black Consciousness and the Quest For True Humanity & I Write What I Like. Biko, who had by this time (1973) founded, and was leading, the all-black South African Students’ Organization (SASO), initially wrote these essays to be included in a book on black theology in South Africa. Here he explains his thesis and philosophy of Black Consciousness: to foster solidarity between black South Africans; undermine governmental divide-and-conquer tactics; restore to black South Africans faith in their capacity to overcome oppression and remind them of the latent political agency and power held in each of them. Black Consciousness gained traction and eventually led to the Soweto Uprising of 1976 (in which student protests against inferior education served as the spark for a massive, violent confrontation between African residents of townships and government security forces).
In August 1977, Biko was arrested by South African police and taken to jail where he was beaten and tortured before being driven 700 miles away to Pretoria, where he was pronounced dead.
