Return to the Source: Selected Texts of Amilcar Cabral

About the book:

In this new, expanded edition of Return to the Source: Selected Texts of Amilcar Cabral we have access to Cabral's warm and humorous informal address to the Africa Information Service, and we revisit several of the principal speeches Cabral delivered during visits to the United States in the final years before his assassination in 1973, including his last written address to his people on New Year's Eve. Return to the Source is essential reading for all who understand that the erasure of historical continuity between social movements has disrupted our ability to make the revolutionary transformation we all desperately require.

A classic collection of essays calling for decolonization through self-liberation

"For us," said Amilcar Cabral, "freedom is an act of culture"--and these were not just words. Guided by the concrete realities of his people, Cabral called for a process of "re-Africanization," a Return to the Source. As a new imperialism has taken hold the world over, many have hearkened back to Return to the Source, but this time, our source of inspiration is Cabral himself. With a system of thought rooted in an African reading of Marx, Cabral was a deep-thinking revolutionary who applied the principles of decolonization as a dialectic task, and in so doing became one of the world's most profoundly influential and effective theoreticians of anti-imperialist struggle. Cabral and his fellow Pan-African movement leaders catalyzed and fortified a militant wave of liberation struggles beginning in Angola, moving through Cabral's homelands of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, and culminating in Mozambique and beyond. He translated abstract theories into agile praxis and in under just ten years steered the liberation of three-quarters of the countryside of Guinea Bissau from Portuguese colonial domination.

About the editor:

Tsenay Serequeberhan is a Professor of Philosophy at Morgan State University in Baltimore. He is the author of the groundbreaking work The Hermeneutics of African Philosophy: Horizon and Discourse and the key text, African Philosophy: The Essential Readings, among other books.

About the host:

Greg Carr is an Associate Professor of Afro-American Studies at Howard University. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Howard School of Law. He is First Vice President of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations and Editor of The Compass: The Journal of ASCAC.  A former board member of the National Council for Black Studies, Dr. Carr has twice been named national “HBCU Male Faculty Member of the Year” by HBCU Digest and has been voted "Professor of the Year" several times by Howard students. He led the team that designed the curriculum framework for the School District of Philadelphia’s mandatory high school African American History course and, during his time as the District's Program Specialist on Race and Culture, co-founded Philadelphia Freedom Schools. His writing has appeared in books, academic and popular journals and he serves as a contributor to and/or commentator in a wide range of media. He is a weekly panelist on the daily digital news show “Roland Martin Unfiltered” and co-hosts Karen Hunter’s weekly Saturday YouTube series, “In Class With Carr.” His commentaries on the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party and the opening of the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture appeared in the August and September 2016 issues of Ebony Magazine.Dr. Carr’s chapter, “Re-Literacy and African Power in the Trump Era,” appears in Not Our President, Third World Press’ book-length commentary on the Trump presidency. He tweets at @AfricanaCarr and blogs at drgregcarr.com

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