A movement that emerged in the U.S. in the 1960s, on the heels of the civil rights movement that began in the 1950s. It refers to the cultivation among blacks of their own distinct cultural identity, and the realisation that being black was something they could be proud of. Black consciousness tended to reject white liberal thinking about racial issues and set out to chart an independent course for black social and political progress. Black consciousness was linked to the movement sometimes known as "black power" that also emerged in the mid- 1960s. Black consciousness was also a strong force in South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, as part of the growing opposition to the system of apartheid.