A Brief History of the Black Arts Movement
The Black Arts movement is an African-American-led art movement active from 1965 to 1975. The innovations of this period helped set the precedent for arts entrepreneurship in reference to black artists.
The heart of the Black Arts Movement movement centered around self-determination and the fostering of self-love in the face of brutal racism. Through art and activism new cultural institutions were formed. Artists began iterating upon and evolving the foundations laid by the Harlem Renaissance especially in regards to poetry, theater, and literature.
The Black Arts Repertory Theatre created by Amiri Baraka was known to be the starting point of the movement. Baraka envisioned a Black school that was responsive to the community and rooted in the same urban landscape as the Harlem Renaissance. Key artist-activists of the Black Arts movement also include Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, and Audre Lorde.
Several entrepreneurial innovations in publishing also emerged during this time. In Chicago, Negro Digest (which later became Black World) which was created by Hoyt Fuller and John Johnson to promote the work of new black literary artists, and Third World Press published black poets.
These new publishing houses differed vastly from the existing ones in Detroit (like Lotus and Broadside Press) by shining recognition on the experimental and innovative writers of the time instead of just republishing the older works of black poets. The Black Scholar, created by Robert Chrisman and Nathan Hare, was also created during this period, and it was the first scholarly journal to promote black studies in academia.
