The Black Arts Movement was a cultural movement conceived of and promoted by Amiri Baraka in the mid-1960s. Its constellation of writers, performers, and artists included Nikki Giovanni, Gwendolyn Brooks, Haki Madhubuti, Etheridge Knight, and Sonia Sanchez. “We want a black poem. And / a Black World. / Let the world be a Black Poem,” writes Baraka (then LeRoi Jones) in his poem “Black Art,” which served as a de facto manifesto for the movement. Its practitioners were energized by a desire to confront white power structures and assert an African American cultural identity. Its aims were community-minded as well as artistic; during its heyday, hundreds of Afrocentric repertory theater companies, public art projects, and publishing ventures were organized throughout the United States.
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Black Arts Movement
A cultural movement conceived of and promoted by Amiri Baraka in the mid-1960s that included Nikki Giovanni, Gwendolyn Brooks, Haki Madhubuti, Etheridge Knight, and Sonia Sanchez.
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- CollectionBy The EditorsAn introduction showcasing one of the most influential cultural and aesthetic movements of the last 100 years.
- AuthorPoet and musician Gil Scott-Heron was born in Chicago. His mother, Bobbie Scott-Heron, was an opera singer and a teacher, and his Jamaican-born father, Gilbert Heron, was the first professional black soccer…
- AuthorBorn and raised in Toledo, Ohio, Black Arts poet, playwright, and children’s writer Mari Evans was educated at the University of Toledo, where she studied fashion design. She was influenced by Langston Hughes…
- AuthorPoet, writer, playwright, and oral historian Thomas Covington Dent was born in New Orleans. He earned a BA in political science at Morehouse College, completed graduate study at the Syracuse University School…
- AuthorPoet, performer, scholar, and educator Sarah Webster Fabio is considered a foundational member of the West Coast Black Arts Movement. Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Fabio was educated at Spelman College, Fisk…
- AuthorActivist and writer bell hooks was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky as Gloria Jean Watkins. As a child, hooks performed poetry readings of work by Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning…
- AuthorA novelist and essayist of considerable renown, James Baldwin bore witness to the unhappy consequences of American racial strife. Baldwin’s writing career began in the last years of legislated segregation;…
- AuthorCultural critic and playwright Larry Neal was a leading member of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s. He was born in Atlanta in 1937 and grew up in Philadelphia, earning a BA in English and history from …
- AuthorBorn in Baltimore, Sam Cornish was educated at Goddard College and Northwestern University. Associated with the Black Arts Movement, Cornish incorporated history and family and takes on topics such as race…
- AuthorPoet Jayne Cortez was born in Fort Huachuca, Arizona, and grew up in California. In addition to publishing a number of collections, including Somewhere in Advance of Nowhere (1996) and Mouth on Paper (1977…
- AuthorFiction writer and poet Henry Dumas was born in Sweet Home, Arkansas, but moved to Harlem when he was 10. He attended City College in New York before joining the Air Force; he was stationed in San Antonio,…
- AuthorLorenzo Thomas was born in Panama and moved with his family to New York in 1948. His father was a pharmacist and his mother a community activist. The family lived in the Bronx and Queens, where Thomas, a native…
- AuthorPoet Nikki Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on June 7, 1943, and grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. She graduated with a degree in history from Fisk University. A world-renowned poet and one of the foremost…
- AuthorEtheridge Knight was born in Corinth, Mississippi. He dropped out of high school while still a teenager and joined the army to serve in the Korea war. Wounded by shrapnel during the conflict, he returned to…
- AuthorPoet, essayist, and novelist Alice Walker was born in 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia, to sharecroppers Willie Lee and Minnie Lou Grant Walker. She earned a BA from Sarah Lawrence College. The author of numerous…
- AuthorSonia Sanchez was born in 1934 in Birmingham, Alabama. She earned her BA in political science from Hunter College in 1955, did postgraduate work at New York University, and studied poetry under the mentorship…
- AuthorDr. Haki R. Madhubuti, poet, author, publisher, and educator, is regarded as an architect of the Black Arts Movement and is founder and publisher of Chicago's Third World Press. Third World Press celebrated…
- AuthorA self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” Audre Lorde dedicated both her life and her creative talent to confronting and addressing injustices of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. Lorde…
- AuthorQuincy Troupe was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of a professional baseball player. After studying for two semesters at Grambling College on a scholarship, he left to join the army. When his service …