The Black Arts Movement was a Black nationalism movement that focused on music, literature, drama, and the visual arts made up of Black artists and intellectuals. This was the cultural section of the Black Power movement, in that its participants shared many of the ideologies of Black self-determination, political beliefs, and African American culture.
By incorporating visual motifs representative of the African Diaspora, as well as themes of revolutionary politics supporting Black Nationalism, the Black Arts Movement overtly distanced itself from White Eurocentric forms of art. It not only highlighted the work of Black artists but sought to define a universal experience of Blackness that expressed empowerment, pride, and liberation.
The Beginning
The Black Arts Movement is credited with starting in 1965 when poet Amiri Baraka established the Black Arts Repertory Theater in Harlem, New York, as a place for artistic expression, shortly after the death of Malcolm X.
Malcolm’s death is also seen as an impetus for the movement, but others say… it was just time. With the creation of the Black Arts Movement, the Black Power movement often fell into one of two camps: the Revolutionary Nationalists, who were best represented by the Black Panther Party, and the Cultural Nationalists.
The latter group called for the creation of poetry, novels, visual arts, and theater to reflect pride in black history and culture. This new emphasis was an affirmation of the autonomy of Black artists to create black art for black people as a means to awaken black consciousness and achieve liberation.
Amiri Baraka
Widely perceived as the father of the Black Arts Movement, the eminent African American poet was one of the most pertinent figures of the 20th century poetry and drama. Although he was born Everett Leroy Jones, he invented a moniker LeRoi Jones and became connected to other writers of the Beat generation in the late 50’s.
Since he was already an established artist and play-writer at the time of the advent of the movement, many people find his turn to Black nationalism as a breaking point in the Black Arts history. His biggest contribution was the founding of the Black Arts Repertory Theatre / School (BARTS), a theatre that operated for a short period of time, but its influence remained strong in the following years.
However, for the majority of African American poets and writers, it was the 1962 Umbra Workshop that gave impetus to the Black Arts as a literary movement. The group consisted of young Black authors, mostly writers and musicians, with a few members who were involved in visual arts as well. It was based in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, which is where Baraka used to live before he decided to start BARTS in Harlem.
At the upstart of the Black Arts Movement, theater and poetry took precedence. Baraka’s poem, “Black Art,” published in “The Liberator” in 1966, was a call to arms for Black artists to galvanize and assert themselves using language and aesthetic expressions that were uniquely indicative of the Black experience. In the poem, Baraka wrote:
“We want a Black poem and a Black World. Let the world be a Black Poem, And Let All Black People Speak This Poem, Silently or LOUD.”
In addition to Baraka, other notable Black Arts Movement authors and poets include Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, Gil Scott-Heron, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Dudley Randall, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Maya Angelou.
Check out more highlights of some of the greatest visual art of the Black Arts Movement here.
Theater Groups and Journals
Key roles in the Black Arts Movement were played by Black theaters and journals that began operating independently, if not differently, from the system established by the White society. Besides its initial purpose as a home for performance, dance, music and drama, the Black theater was used perpetually as a place for lectures, talks, film screenings, meetings and panel discussions.
More importantly, it kept the spirit of a productive, activist cultural center, as opposed to other theatres (Black or White), which were either vastly commercialized or restrictive, primarily focused on high art.
Black theater groups opened all across the United States – in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc. Some of the most famous ones include The New Lafayette Theatre and Barbara Ann Teer’s National Black Theatre from New York and The Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC) in Chicago. OBAC attracted visual artist groups as well, whose work inspired mural movements and reportedly influenced the inauguration of Afri Cobra – the African Commune of Bad, Revolutionary Artists.
However, all that was achieved in theatres wouldn’t have been as influential had there not been the magazines and journals that popularized Black literature and made it known by the public. The most important magazine to publish Black literature was “Negro Digest / Black World,” a journal that became famous for high-quality publication content, that included fiction, poetry, drama, criticism and theoretical articles as well.
Significance and Legacy
Although the movement does not exist as such today – the members took separate ways, as their political views started diverging in 1974 – you can hear, feel and see the influence of the movement in its spirit echoing in today’s music, Rap music; poetry, Spoken Word; and art with its expressive aesthetics of many kinds.