New Book and Audiobooks from the BlackQuaker Project, 2025-2026:
Innovative Learning Resources Challenging Conventional Narratives
Dear F/friends,
We wind down our celebration of the 2026 Black History Month by spotlighting a milestone: a trio of unique books that the BlackQuaker Project (BQP) has released over the past 8 months. Two major Quaker organizations, Friends General Conference (FGC) and Pendle Hill, have respectively adapted two of our ministry’s print publications to audiobooks. Africa World Press has also published a new book, five decades in the making, on the personal experiences of Harold D. Weaver, Jr., with African students in Moscow during the height of the Cold War. Together, this intimate historical study and these lively audiobooks offer new knowledge to educators, students, scholars, and activists while challenging conventional wisdom and norms.
1. New Book: Race, Decolonization, and the Cold War: African Student Elites in Moscow, 1955-1964 (2025). By Harold D. Weaver, Jr.
Friend Weaver offers a new interpretation of an important Cold-War phenomenon: post-colonial African students in the USSR and other Socialist countries. The African American Quaker scholar-activist reveals accurate information–based on participant observation and interviews–on the actual experiences of African students in Moscow during the crucial decolonization period of the 1960s, dispelling misinformation and disinformation of earlier Western narratives in media and scholarship. Available at Africa World Press.
2. New Audiobook: Race, Systemic Violence, and Retrospective Justice: An African American Quaker Scholar-Activist Challenges Conventional Narratives (2026). Written and narrated by Harold D. Weaver, Jr.In this manifesto for 21st century Quakerism, the author urges listeners to adopt a model of Retrospective Justice to heal past and recent injustices, identifies various forms of structural violence that we must confront with anti-violence, argues that justice must be front-and-center in the testimonies of the Religious Society of Friends, and suggests replacing SPICES as an acronym for Quakerism with “JaM with SPICES:” Justice and Mercy with Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, and Stewardship, as the first step towards moving beyond our reliance on any acronym to sum up the complexities of modern Quakerism. Now available at Audible and in his seminal 2020 Pendle Hill pamphlet.
3. New Audiobook: Black Fire: African American Quakers on Spirituality & Human Rights (2025). Edited by Harold D. Weaver Jr., Paul Kriese, and Stephen W. Angell. Narrated by actors JeNie Fleming and Lance Danton
Our trailblazing 2011 anthology pulled together the collected works of 18 African American Quakers across 200 years of USA history, from early 19th century visionaries like Sojourner Truth and Sarah Mapps Douglass to mid-20th century trailblazers such as Howard Thurman, Ira de Augstine Reid, and Bayard Rustin. In August 2025, FGC gave this book a second act–with talented actors bringing to life–in such a way that the printed page cannot–the speeches, poems, songs, studies, and essays of our collection. This captivating audiobook is available at Audible, Barnes & Noble, and other retailers.
For Further Resources: Quakers of Color International Archive (QCIA):
We also encourage you to explore the Quakers of Color International Archive (QCIA), which has recently released 17 new interviews available online at Haverford College Library’s Quaker & Special Collections. They join our pilot program of 12 testimonies which you can also find online at the UMass Amherst W.E.B. Du Bois Library. Across both libraries you will find a collection of videotaped and transcribed interviews with Friends of Color from Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, Europe, Asian America, the Caribbean, and African America.
We hope these innovative resources will aid those seeking truth and justice, and encourage you to write to us at theblackquakerproject@gmail.com with any reflections, insights, or questions you may have.
Peace and Blessings,
The BlackQuaker Project
Wellesley Friends Meeting,
New England Yearly Meeting of Friends (Quakers)
www.theblackquakerproject.org
27 February 2026
Friends Association for Higher Education 