Winifred Breines
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195179040
- eISBN:
- 9780199788583
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195179040.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
The Black Power movement of the 1960s developed out of anger about the way African Americans were treated in the United States. It emphasized black culture, history, pride, community, and rage. ...
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The Black Power movement of the 1960s developed out of anger about the way African Americans were treated in the United States. It emphasized black culture, history, pride, community, and rage. Spokesmen argued that black men were more damaged by racism than black women, that men should be the leaders, head of the household, and dominant. Black women were empowered and thrilled by the Black Power movement, including the Black Panther Party, but many had critiques of its male chauvinism, common to many nationalist movements. Female radical African American activists and Black Arts movement members sometimes did not find the intraracial cross-gender solidarity that they sought and were often disappointed.Less
The Black Power movement of the 1960s developed out of anger about the way African Americans were treated in the United States. It emphasized black culture, history, pride, community, and rage. Spokesmen argued that black men were more damaged by racism than black women, that men should be the leaders, head of the household, and dominant. Black women were empowered and thrilled by the Black Power movement, including the Black Panther Party, but many had critiques of its male chauvinism, common to many nationalist movements. Female radical African American activists and Black Arts movement members sometimes did not find the intraracial cross-gender solidarity that they sought and were often disappointed.
LeRoi Jones and Amiri Baraka
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199609291
- eISBN:
- 9780191731723
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199609291.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter examines a range of Baraka's writings (poems, plays, and essays) from 1960 to 1979, during which time he changed from being a Beat‐affiliated writer (named LeRoi Jones) to a Black ...
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This chapter examines a range of Baraka's writings (poems, plays, and essays) from 1960 to 1979, during which time he changed from being a Beat‐affiliated writer (named LeRoi Jones) to a Black Cultural‐Nationalist, then a Pan‐Afrikanist, and finally a Third‐World Socialist. The opening discussion is of how Baraka in poetry collections like Black Magic (1969) and It's Nation Time (1970) developed a Black Arts potentialism that contrasts with Ginsberg's. Various plays that Baraka wrote in the 1960s are also examined—notably, A Black Mass (1966), Slave Ship (1967), and Great Goodness of Life: A Coon Show (1967). Drawing on Howard University's Amiri Baraka Archive (which includes FBI reports on his plays and speeches), the chapter presents new scholarship on his drama and his cultural activism with groups like the Republic of New Afrika. After examining how Baraka's potentialism reaches a spiritual apogee with his poetry collection Spirit Reach (1972), the concluding discussion contrasts such spiritualism with the didacticism of his Third‐World Socialist writings such as the poetry volume Hard Facts (1975).Less
This chapter examines a range of Baraka's writings (poems, plays, and essays) from 1960 to 1979, during which time he changed from being a Beat‐affiliated writer (named LeRoi Jones) to a Black Cultural‐Nationalist, then a Pan‐Afrikanist, and finally a Third‐World Socialist. The opening discussion is of how Baraka in poetry collections like Black Magic (1969) and It's Nation Time (1970) developed a Black Arts potentialism that contrasts with Ginsberg's. Various plays that Baraka wrote in the 1960s are also examined—notably, A Black Mass (1966), Slave Ship (1967), and Great Goodness of Life: A Coon Show (1967). Drawing on Howard University's Amiri Baraka Archive (which includes FBI reports on his plays and speeches), the chapter presents new scholarship on his drama and his cultural activism with groups like the Republic of New Afrika. After examining how Baraka's potentialism reaches a spiritual apogee with his poetry collection Spirit Reach (1972), the concluding discussion contrasts such spiritualism with the didacticism of his Third‐World Socialist writings such as the poetry volume Hard Facts (1975).
Bernard Gendron
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195336641
- eISBN:
- 9780199868551
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195336641.003.0011
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western, Popular
This chapter analyses the resurgence of the jazz avant‐garde in New York in the mid‐1960s, focusing in particular upon musicians' negotiation of competing aesthetic, social, and economic imperatives. ...
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This chapter analyses the resurgence of the jazz avant‐garde in New York in the mid‐1960s, focusing in particular upon musicians' negotiation of competing aesthetic, social, and economic imperatives. Through a detailed investigation of shifting patterns of reception in the jazz press, attention is drawn to a complex of factors that lifted the jazz avant‐garde from near obscurity in the early years of the decade, to a canonised status by 1965. Prominent amongst these factors was the politically radical discourse promoted by figures associated with the Black Arts Movement such as Amiri Baraka and Larry Neal, which conceived black avant‐garde musicians as shaping the spiritual foundation for revolutionary change. The articulation of a radical social purpose thus assisted the process of canonisation, although this canonisation brought no parallel economic success.Less
This chapter analyses the resurgence of the jazz avant‐garde in New York in the mid‐1960s, focusing in particular upon musicians' negotiation of competing aesthetic, social, and economic imperatives. Through a detailed investigation of shifting patterns of reception in the jazz press, attention is drawn to a complex of factors that lifted the jazz avant‐garde from near obscurity in the early years of the decade, to a canonised status by 1965. Prominent amongst these factors was the politically radical discourse promoted by figures associated with the Black Arts Movement such as Amiri Baraka and Larry Neal, which conceived black avant‐garde musicians as shaping the spiritual foundation for revolutionary change. The articulation of a radical social purpose thus assisted the process of canonisation, although this canonisation brought no parallel economic success.
Barbara Goff and Michael Simpson
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199217182
- eISBN:
- 9780191712388
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199217182.003.0004
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Rita Dove's The Darker Face of the Earth examines the process of building ‘America’ out of partly African materials. Incest becomes a sign for the forced amalgamation of cultures that characterized ...
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Rita Dove's The Darker Face of the Earth examines the process of building ‘America’ out of partly African materials. Incest becomes a sign for the forced amalgamation of cultures that characterized plantation slavery, and the oedipal tropes of knowledge, parentage, desire, and narrative are made newly relevant by the particular racialized history of the United States. The politics of the Greek drama, whereby the hero is pitted against the community, are also interrogated by the various choices made by figures such as Augustus, the chorus and the conspirators. The issue of oedipally competing traditions is scrutinised via African-American tropes such as Esu, the talking book, and the tragic mulatto/a. Also examined is the cultural position of the dramatist herself, as a black woman writer and a member of the generation immediately after the Black Arts Movement.Less
Rita Dove's The Darker Face of the Earth examines the process of building ‘America’ out of partly African materials. Incest becomes a sign for the forced amalgamation of cultures that characterized plantation slavery, and the oedipal tropes of knowledge, parentage, desire, and narrative are made newly relevant by the particular racialized history of the United States. The politics of the Greek drama, whereby the hero is pitted against the community, are also interrogated by the various choices made by figures such as Augustus, the chorus and the conspirators. The issue of oedipally competing traditions is scrutinised via African-American tropes such as Esu, the talking book, and the tragic mulatto/a. Also examined is the cultural position of the dramatist herself, as a black woman writer and a member of the generation immediately after the Black Arts Movement.
Carmen L. Phelps
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617036804
- eISBN:
- 9781621039174
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617036804.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This chapter explores how the agenda of the Black Arts movement (BAM) was shaped by and paradoxically instituted by a collaboration of competing and contradicting factors. Black American artists, ...
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This chapter explores how the agenda of the Black Arts movement (BAM) was shaped by and paradoxically instituted by a collaboration of competing and contradicting factors. Black American artists, activists, and intellectuals, identified themselves as “Black Artists,” many of them favored a socially progressive agenda for obtaining cultural empowerment for black communities. Black resistance to white American domination has always been pacifist, militarist, or a combination of the two, a contradiction that proved to be essential in the formation of BAM ideals of diversity.Less
This chapter explores how the agenda of the Black Arts movement (BAM) was shaped by and paradoxically instituted by a collaboration of competing and contradicting factors. Black American artists, activists, and intellectuals, identified themselves as “Black Artists,” many of them favored a socially progressive agenda for obtaining cultural empowerment for black communities. Black resistance to white American domination has always been pacifist, militarist, or a combination of the two, a contradiction that proved to be essential in the formation of BAM ideals of diversity.
Carmen L. Phelps
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617036804
- eISBN:
- 9781621039174
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617036804.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
A disproportionate number of male writers, including such figures as Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, Maulana Karenga, and Haki Madhubuti, continue to be credited for constructing the iconic and ideological ...
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A disproportionate number of male writers, including such figures as Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, Maulana Karenga, and Haki Madhubuti, continue to be credited for constructing the iconic and ideological foundations for what would be perpetuated as the Black Art Movement (BAM). Though there has arisen an increasing amount of scholarship that recognizes leading women artists, activists, and leaders of this period, these new perspectives have yet to recognize adequately the ways women aspired to far more than a mere dismantling of male-oriented ideals. This book examines the work of several women artists working in Chicago, a key focal point for the energy and production of the movement. Angela Jackson, Johari Amiri, and Carolyn Rodgers reflect in their writing specific cultural, local, and regional insights, and demonstrate the capaciousness of Black Art rather than its constraints. Expanding from these three writers, the book analyzes the breadth of women’s writing in the BAM. In doing so, it argues that these and other women attained advantageous and unique positions to represent the potential of the BAM aesthetic, even if their experiences and artistic perspectives were informed by both social conventions and constraints. This book’s examination brings forward a powerful contribution to the aesthetics and history of a movement that still inspires.Less
A disproportionate number of male writers, including such figures as Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, Maulana Karenga, and Haki Madhubuti, continue to be credited for constructing the iconic and ideological foundations for what would be perpetuated as the Black Art Movement (BAM). Though there has arisen an increasing amount of scholarship that recognizes leading women artists, activists, and leaders of this period, these new perspectives have yet to recognize adequately the ways women aspired to far more than a mere dismantling of male-oriented ideals. This book examines the work of several women artists working in Chicago, a key focal point for the energy and production of the movement. Angela Jackson, Johari Amiri, and Carolyn Rodgers reflect in their writing specific cultural, local, and regional insights, and demonstrate the capaciousness of Black Art rather than its constraints. Expanding from these three writers, the book analyzes the breadth of women’s writing in the BAM. In doing so, it argues that these and other women attained advantageous and unique positions to represent the potential of the BAM aesthetic, even if their experiences and artistic perspectives were informed by both social conventions and constraints. This book’s examination brings forward a powerful contribution to the aesthetics and history of a movement that still inspires.
Carmen L. Phelps
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617036804
- eISBN:
- 9781621039174
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617036804.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This chapter discusses the contributions of female artists, activists, and intellectuals from the Black Arts Movement (BAM) to the expansion of black aesthetic. The BAM fulfilled its ideological aims ...
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This chapter discusses the contributions of female artists, activists, and intellectuals from the Black Arts Movement (BAM) to the expansion of black aesthetic. The BAM fulfilled its ideological aims through numerous artistic, activist, and intellectual, collaborations from its key participants and its very own critics. This chapter points out that BAM’s female artists such as Johari Amini, Carolyn Rodgers, and Angela Jackson, not only promoted the black American female perspective but also showed a degree of commitment to an inclusive concept of Black Art.Less
This chapter discusses the contributions of female artists, activists, and intellectuals from the Black Arts Movement (BAM) to the expansion of black aesthetic. The BAM fulfilled its ideological aims through numerous artistic, activist, and intellectual, collaborations from its key participants and its very own critics. This chapter points out that BAM’s female artists such as Johari Amini, Carolyn Rodgers, and Angela Jackson, not only promoted the black American female perspective but also showed a degree of commitment to an inclusive concept of Black Art.
Elizabeth Todd-Breland
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469646589
- eISBN:
- 9781469647173
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469646589.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter focuses on the creation of independent Black educational institutions as another articulation and enactment of a Black self-determinist politics of Black achievement. This chapter ...
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This chapter focuses on the creation of independent Black educational institutions as another articulation and enactment of a Black self-determinist politics of Black achievement. This chapter specifically focuses on the Institute of Positive Education (IPE), an independent Black institution influenced by the Black Power and Black Arts movements. Like many community control advocates, these Black education reformers were not interested in pursuing integration. The architects of IPE–-including Soyini Walton, Carol Lee, and Haki Madhubuti—rejected the state’s ability to provide an adequate education for Black students. Instead, they circumvented the public school system and the financial support of the state by creating an independent school—the New Concept Development Center—with an African-centered curriculum and programming based in a Black community. By bypassing the state-run education system, the educators and operators of independent Black institutions worked within a set of political possibilities and constraints different from those of organizations that sought engagement with the state. Concerns about IPE’s scale and financial viability foreshadow the organization’s move to open charter schools.Less
This chapter focuses on the creation of independent Black educational institutions as another articulation and enactment of a Black self-determinist politics of Black achievement. This chapter specifically focuses on the Institute of Positive Education (IPE), an independent Black institution influenced by the Black Power and Black Arts movements. Like many community control advocates, these Black education reformers were not interested in pursuing integration. The architects of IPE–-including Soyini Walton, Carol Lee, and Haki Madhubuti—rejected the state’s ability to provide an adequate education for Black students. Instead, they circumvented the public school system and the financial support of the state by creating an independent school—the New Concept Development Center—with an African-centered curriculum and programming based in a Black community. By bypassing the state-run education system, the educators and operators of independent Black institutions worked within a set of political possibilities and constraints different from those of organizations that sought engagement with the state. Concerns about IPE’s scale and financial viability foreshadow the organization’s move to open charter schools.
Kymberly N. Pinder
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252039928
- eISBN:
- 9780252098086
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252039928.003.0004
- Subject:
- Art, Visual Culture
This chapter examines the Black Mural Movement in the context of religious imagery by focusing on the evolution of Joseph W. Evans Jr.'s art. In 1986 Evans illustrated the motto of Chicago's Trinity ...
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This chapter examines the Black Mural Movement in the context of religious imagery by focusing on the evolution of Joseph W. Evans Jr.'s art. In 1986 Evans illustrated the motto of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian” with a painting of a Jesus with dark brown skin and tightly curled black hair, his arms outstretched around a smiling African American family. This image of a black Christ was Evans's vision of being black and Christian. In the 1970s Evans joined TUCC, where the pastor, Jeremiah Wright Jr., promoted Black Liberation Theology and recommended specific texts and sermons for the artist to study that transformed his conception of Christ. This chapter first considers black theology and pan-Africanism at TUCC before discussing the influence of the Black Arts Movement and the muralist William Walker on Chicago. It also assesses the impact, in terms of style and content, of the murals on Chicago's South Side on Evans's work and concludes with an overview of TUCC's stained glass program.Less
This chapter examines the Black Mural Movement in the context of religious imagery by focusing on the evolution of Joseph W. Evans Jr.'s art. In 1986 Evans illustrated the motto of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian” with a painting of a Jesus with dark brown skin and tightly curled black hair, his arms outstretched around a smiling African American family. This image of a black Christ was Evans's vision of being black and Christian. In the 1970s Evans joined TUCC, where the pastor, Jeremiah Wright Jr., promoted Black Liberation Theology and recommended specific texts and sermons for the artist to study that transformed his conception of Christ. This chapter first considers black theology and pan-Africanism at TUCC before discussing the influence of the Black Arts Movement and the muralist William Walker on Chicago. It also assesses the impact, in terms of style and content, of the murals on Chicago's South Side on Evans's work and concludes with an overview of TUCC's stained glass program.
Carmen L. Phelps
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617036804
- eISBN:
- 9781621039174
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617036804.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This chapter discusses the grassroots Black Arts movement of Chicago and specifically looks at the Organization for Black American Culture (OBAC). It explains that OBAC was considered as a branch of ...
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This chapter discusses the grassroots Black Arts movement of Chicago and specifically looks at the Organization for Black American Culture (OBAC). It explains that OBAC was considered as a branch of the Black Arts Movement (BAM). However, OBAC’s aesthetic was inspired by its own unique, culturally specific objectives through the artistic and entrepreneurial collaborations among important figures and institutions that aimed to support the artistic and progressive culture in Chicago. OBAC’s agenda was influenced by the broader national movement, and its participants collaborated with BAM artists in other cities such as New York, Detroit, and Philadelphia.Less
This chapter discusses the grassroots Black Arts movement of Chicago and specifically looks at the Organization for Black American Culture (OBAC). It explains that OBAC was considered as a branch of the Black Arts Movement (BAM). However, OBAC’s aesthetic was inspired by its own unique, culturally specific objectives through the artistic and entrepreneurial collaborations among important figures and institutions that aimed to support the artistic and progressive culture in Chicago. OBAC’s agenda was influenced by the broader national movement, and its participants collaborated with BAM artists in other cities such as New York, Detroit, and Philadelphia.
Margo Natalie Crawford
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231169349
- eISBN:
- 9780231538503
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231169349.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This chapter examines the Black Arts movement (BAM) of the 1960s and 1970s and uses the notion of “black post-blackness” as a way to understand the continuity between the BAM and twenty-first-century ...
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This chapter examines the Black Arts movement (BAM) of the 1960s and 1970s and uses the notion of “black post-blackness” as a way to understand the continuity between the BAM and twenty-first-century African American aesthetics. It challenges the claims of post-black advocates about the lack of room for experimentation, abstraction, and play in 1960s and 1970s black aesthetics. During this time, it argues that black aesthetics was a domain for improvisation, abstraction, and performance in ways that get ignored by proponents of post-blackness who want to see the concept as a wholly new and unique thing. It also explains how the BAM pivoted on a dialectic between collective mirrors and collective collages that layered and gave blackness depth; this depth was a spatial and temporal strategy of resistance that insisted on blackness as the past, present, and future. Finally, it asserts that black aesthetics’ time of entanglement is what the post-black performances erase.Less
This chapter examines the Black Arts movement (BAM) of the 1960s and 1970s and uses the notion of “black post-blackness” as a way to understand the continuity between the BAM and twenty-first-century African American aesthetics. It challenges the claims of post-black advocates about the lack of room for experimentation, abstraction, and play in 1960s and 1970s black aesthetics. During this time, it argues that black aesthetics was a domain for improvisation, abstraction, and performance in ways that get ignored by proponents of post-blackness who want to see the concept as a wholly new and unique thing. It also explains how the BAM pivoted on a dialectic between collective mirrors and collective collages that layered and gave blackness depth; this depth was a spatial and temporal strategy of resistance that insisted on blackness as the past, present, and future. Finally, it asserts that black aesthetics’ time of entanglement is what the post-black performances erase.
Stephen Schryer
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781503603677
- eISBN:
- 9781503606081
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9781503603677.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter discusses two Black Arts writers who benefited from War on Poverty patronage: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Gwendolyn Brooks. In The System of Dante’s Hell and In the Mecca, the two ...
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This chapter discusses two Black Arts writers who benefited from War on Poverty patronage: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Gwendolyn Brooks. In The System of Dante’s Hell and In the Mecca, the two writers developed distinct versions of participatory art. Like much of Baraka’s Beat-period work, The System of Dante’s Hell thematizes his dissatisfaction with the white counterculture and desire to create art that could connect him with black urban audiences. However, the novel draws on the counterculture’s essentialist conception of lower-class culture in ways that would continue to shape Baraka’s cultural nationalist output of the late 1960s. In contrast, Brooks’s In the Mecca rejects the immersive drama that defines Baraka’s Black Arts. Inspired by her Community Action Program–sponsored work with Chicago’s Blackstone Rangers, the collection insists that minority poets use the resources of poetic form to achieve a calibrated distance from their lower-class subjects.Less
This chapter discusses two Black Arts writers who benefited from War on Poverty patronage: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Gwendolyn Brooks. In The System of Dante’s Hell and In the Mecca, the two writers developed distinct versions of participatory art. Like much of Baraka’s Beat-period work, The System of Dante’s Hell thematizes his dissatisfaction with the white counterculture and desire to create art that could connect him with black urban audiences. However, the novel draws on the counterculture’s essentialist conception of lower-class culture in ways that would continue to shape Baraka’s cultural nationalist output of the late 1960s. In contrast, Brooks’s In the Mecca rejects the immersive drama that defines Baraka’s Black Arts. Inspired by her Community Action Program–sponsored work with Chicago’s Blackstone Rangers, the collection insists that minority poets use the resources of poetic form to achieve a calibrated distance from their lower-class subjects.
Erik S. Gellman
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037023
- eISBN:
- 9780252094392
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037023.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter explores the early career of Chicago-born painter Charles White, and argues that the artistic production of young black artists became intricately intertwined with protest politics ...
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This chapter explores the early career of Chicago-born painter Charles White, and argues that the artistic production of young black artists became intricately intertwined with protest politics during the 1930s. As a young man, White educated himself in the history of African Americans by discovering books like The New Negro, the definitive collection of the Harlem Renaissance, and by joining the Arts Craft Guild, where White and his cohorts taught each other new painting techniques and held their own exhibitions. These painters developed as artists by identifying with the laboring people of Chicago and by pushing to expand the boundaries of American democracy. African American artists like White thus came to represent the vanguard of the cultural movement among workers in the 1930s, making Chicago's South Side the center of the black arts movement.Less
This chapter explores the early career of Chicago-born painter Charles White, and argues that the artistic production of young black artists became intricately intertwined with protest politics during the 1930s. As a young man, White educated himself in the history of African Americans by discovering books like The New Negro, the definitive collection of the Harlem Renaissance, and by joining the Arts Craft Guild, where White and his cohorts taught each other new painting techniques and held their own exhibitions. These painters developed as artists by identifying with the laboring people of Chicago and by pushing to expand the boundaries of American democracy. African American artists like White thus came to represent the vanguard of the cultural movement among workers in the 1930s, making Chicago's South Side the center of the black arts movement.
Margo Natalie Crawford
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041006
- eISBN:
- 9780252099557
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252041006.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
Black Post-Blackness compares the black avant-garde of the 1960s and 1970s Black Arts Movement with the most innovative spins of twenty-first century black aesthetics. Crawford zooms in on the 1970s ...
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Black Post-Blackness compares the black avant-garde of the 1960s and 1970s Black Arts Movement with the most innovative spins of twenty-first century black aesthetics. Crawford zooms in on the 1970s second wave of the Black Arts Movement and shows the connections between this final wave of the Black Arts movement and the early years of 21st century black aesthetics. She uncovers the circle of black post-blackness that pivots on the power of anticipation, abstraction, mixed media, the global South, satire, public interiority, and the fantastic. Black Post-Blackness argues that the full innovativeness of the BAM only emerges when we recognize the movement’s full anticipation of the “beyond black art” waves of 21st century black aesthetics. The BAM has much more in common with 21st century African American literature and visual art than we often realize. The push to the mixed media, abstraction, satire, and sheer experimentation in 21st century African American literature and visual art is often framed as a push away from the narrowness of the category “black art” but it is, often, a push back to the mixed media, abstraction, satire, and experimentation in the BAM.Less
Black Post-Blackness compares the black avant-garde of the 1960s and 1970s Black Arts Movement with the most innovative spins of twenty-first century black aesthetics. Crawford zooms in on the 1970s second wave of the Black Arts Movement and shows the connections between this final wave of the Black Arts movement and the early years of 21st century black aesthetics. She uncovers the circle of black post-blackness that pivots on the power of anticipation, abstraction, mixed media, the global South, satire, public interiority, and the fantastic. Black Post-Blackness argues that the full innovativeness of the BAM only emerges when we recognize the movement’s full anticipation of the “beyond black art” waves of 21st century black aesthetics. The BAM has much more in common with 21st century African American literature and visual art than we often realize. The push to the mixed media, abstraction, satire, and sheer experimentation in 21st century African American literature and visual art is often framed as a push away from the narrowness of the category “black art” but it is, often, a push back to the mixed media, abstraction, satire, and experimentation in the BAM.
Carmen L. Phelps
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617036804
- eISBN:
- 9781621039174
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617036804.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This chapter explores the character of Johari Amini’s poetic works. Amini’s first published collection of poetic works, Images in Black (1967), served as a critique of images, iconography, and visual ...
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This chapter explores the character of Johari Amini’s poetic works. Amini’s first published collection of poetic works, Images in Black (1967), served as a critique of images, iconography, and visual references that commonly viewed aesthetic conventions that defined black culture and identity. Amini’s poetry projected the preeminent community and nation building goals that embodied the goals of the Black Arts Movement.Less
This chapter explores the character of Johari Amini’s poetic works. Amini’s first published collection of poetic works, Images in Black (1967), served as a critique of images, iconography, and visual references that commonly viewed aesthetic conventions that defined black culture and identity. Amini’s poetry projected the preeminent community and nation building goals that embodied the goals of the Black Arts Movement.
Carmen L. Phelps
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617036804
- eISBN:
- 9781621039174
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617036804.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This chapter discusses Carolyn Rodgers’s poetic works in her poetry collections, including Paper Soul (1968) and Songs of a Black Bird (1969). It explains that Rodgers’ poetry showed that the concept ...
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This chapter discusses Carolyn Rodgers’s poetic works in her poetry collections, including Paper Soul (1968) and Songs of a Black Bird (1969). It explains that Rodgers’ poetry showed that the concept of Black Art was not a “fixed” one, but rather, something that varies and changes its form, function, and meaning with each piece of work produced by African American artists. In her first poetic works, Rodgers pointed out that the goal of defining the role of the Black Arts writer continued to be an essential preoccupation for self-acclaimed Black Arts Movement participants, as the movement wanted writers to position themselves within unwavering spaces of political expression and cultural representation.Less
This chapter discusses Carolyn Rodgers’s poetic works in her poetry collections, including Paper Soul (1968) and Songs of a Black Bird (1969). It explains that Rodgers’ poetry showed that the concept of Black Art was not a “fixed” one, but rather, something that varies and changes its form, function, and meaning with each piece of work produced by African American artists. In her first poetic works, Rodgers pointed out that the goal of defining the role of the Black Arts writer continued to be an essential preoccupation for self-acclaimed Black Arts Movement participants, as the movement wanted writers to position themselves within unwavering spaces of political expression and cultural representation.
GerShun Avilez
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040122
- eISBN:
- 9780252098321
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040122.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This book explores the long-overlooked links between Black Nationalist activism and the renaissance of artistic experimentation emerging from recent African American literature, visual art, and film. ...
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This book explores the long-overlooked links between Black Nationalist activism and the renaissance of artistic experimentation emerging from recent African American literature, visual art, and film. The book charts a new genealogy of contemporary African American artistic production that illuminates how questions of gender and sexuality guided artistic experimentation in the Black Arts Movement from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. As the book shows, the artistic production of the Black Arts era provides a set of critical methodologies and paradigms rooted in the disidentification with Black Nationalist discourses. The book studies how this emerging subjectivity, termed aesthetic radicalism, critiqued nationalist rhetoric in the past. It also continues to offer novel means for expressing black intimacy and embodiment via experimental works of art and innovative artistic methods. A bold addition to an advancing field, this book rewrites recent black cultural production even as it uncovers unexpected ways of locating black radicalism.Less
This book explores the long-overlooked links between Black Nationalist activism and the renaissance of artistic experimentation emerging from recent African American literature, visual art, and film. The book charts a new genealogy of contemporary African American artistic production that illuminates how questions of gender and sexuality guided artistic experimentation in the Black Arts Movement from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. As the book shows, the artistic production of the Black Arts era provides a set of critical methodologies and paradigms rooted in the disidentification with Black Nationalist discourses. The book studies how this emerging subjectivity, termed aesthetic radicalism, critiqued nationalist rhetoric in the past. It also continues to offer novel means for expressing black intimacy and embodiment via experimental works of art and innovative artistic methods. A bold addition to an advancing field, this book rewrites recent black cultural production even as it uncovers unexpected ways of locating black radicalism.
Ian Rocksborough-Smith
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041662
- eISBN:
- 9780252050336
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252041662.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
The fourth chapter of this book examines how important intergenerational discussions revolved around black public-history labors in Chicago into the Black Power era. Many Chicago activists of the ...
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The fourth chapter of this book examines how important intergenerational discussions revolved around black public-history labors in Chicago into the Black Power era. Many Chicago activists of the Black Power and black arts movements (BAM) were impacted by the growing influence over the 1960s of the DuSable Museum of African American History, whose programs were expanding and continuing to reach younger generations as the museum’s founders had intended. BAM leaders in Chicago—such as Haki Madhubuti and pioneering black-studies historians—were mentored by Margaret and Charles Burroughs and some of the cohort who founded the DuSable Museum.Less
The fourth chapter of this book examines how important intergenerational discussions revolved around black public-history labors in Chicago into the Black Power era. Many Chicago activists of the Black Power and black arts movements (BAM) were impacted by the growing influence over the 1960s of the DuSable Museum of African American History, whose programs were expanding and continuing to reach younger generations as the museum’s founders had intended. BAM leaders in Chicago—such as Haki Madhubuti and pioneering black-studies historians—were mentored by Margaret and Charles Burroughs and some of the cohort who founded the DuSable Museum.
Charles Nero
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781846319389
- eISBN:
- 9781781380901
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846319389.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Melvin Dixon’s 1991 novel Vanishing Rooms is widely regarded as a gay novel, but it intersects in specific ways with African American liberation struggles. First, it uses the queer doubling ...
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Melvin Dixon’s 1991 novel Vanishing Rooms is widely regarded as a gay novel, but it intersects in specific ways with African American liberation struggles. First, it uses the queer doubling convention that W. E. B. Du Bois proposed in The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and earlier works to represent homoerotic desire between a feminized African American male and a reckless, masculine white male as the basis for interracial nation-building. Women, in this convention, cement the bonds of men with men that feminist and queer theorists contend are the basis of patriarchy. Second, the novel bears the unequivocal stamp of the Black Arts Movement through its use of two icons, Nina Simone and the Nation of Islam. While ending patriarchy remains a challenge, the novel brilliantly calls into question an exclusive focus on gay liberation that does not address the specificity of black experience.Less
Melvin Dixon’s 1991 novel Vanishing Rooms is widely regarded as a gay novel, but it intersects in specific ways with African American liberation struggles. First, it uses the queer doubling convention that W. E. B. Du Bois proposed in The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and earlier works to represent homoerotic desire between a feminized African American male and a reckless, masculine white male as the basis for interracial nation-building. Women, in this convention, cement the bonds of men with men that feminist and queer theorists contend are the basis of patriarchy. Second, the novel bears the unequivocal stamp of the Black Arts Movement through its use of two icons, Nina Simone and the Nation of Islam. While ending patriarchy remains a challenge, the novel brilliantly calls into question an exclusive focus on gay liberation that does not address the specificity of black experience.
Halifu Osumare
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780813056616
- eISBN:
- 9780813053530
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813056616.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter tells the author’s beginnings in dance in high school and her developing dance training as an undergraduate at San Francisco State University. She also probes the unique qualities of the ...
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This chapter tells the author’s beginnings in dance in high school and her developing dance training as an undergraduate at San Francisco State University. She also probes the unique qualities of the SF Bay Area in the latter 60s, specifically as it relates to the Black Arts Movement-West, the hippie counterculture movement, and black militancy leading to the formation of Oakland’s Black Panther Party and the SF State Strike for Ethnic Studies. She shows how she situated dance as her unique revolutionary statement and took this approach when leaving the US for Europe as a young woman.Less
This chapter tells the author’s beginnings in dance in high school and her developing dance training as an undergraduate at San Francisco State University. She also probes the unique qualities of the SF Bay Area in the latter 60s, specifically as it relates to the Black Arts Movement-West, the hippie counterculture movement, and black militancy leading to the formation of Oakland’s Black Panther Party and the SF State Strike for Ethnic Studies. She shows how she situated dance as her unique revolutionary statement and took this approach when leaving the US for Europe as a young woman.
