ABSTRACT
In 1977, Steve Biko, the Black Consciousness Movement leader in South Africa, was killed while in the custody of police in the apartheid state as it confronted the growing challenge from communities of colour seeking their freedom and full citizenship. The United States was itself confronted by the rising challenge to the Jim Crow order within American life in the aftermath of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. In effect, the stories of South Africa and the United States were part of the larger post-1945 Black Atlantic context in which the simultaneous struggle against European colonialism in Africa. The Caribbean, Jim Crow in the United States, and apartheid in South Africa, redefined the notions of freedom and citizenship in the Atlantic World. In effect, the post-1945 drive for de-colonization, the challenges to Jim Crow, and the struggle to end apartheid marked the dawn of a new era in the Atlantic World.
