Black Arts
- Post WWII
- America was shattered during the decade by black civil rights and white youth movements that polarized various populations of the U.S.
- Southern whites pushed to stop blacks seeking civil rights; Northerners challenged the south and its system of racial segregation.
- The Vietnamese war and it tragic outcomes were displayed every night on the 6 o'clock news.
- More than 57,000 Americans had been killed.
- Years following the Bay of pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, brought disruptive civil rights and black power agitation.
- Eugene "Bull" Connor was one of the most evil men down south. He turned fire hoses and police dogs on nonviolent demonstrators while his troops clubbed women and children alike into bloody unconsciousness
- Elected southern officials refused to obey the law and integrate public facilities.
- Organizations formed into revolutionary cadres to fight against inequality Ex) Congress of Racial Equality, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
- The Black Art movement objective was to transform the manner in which black people in the U.S. were defined and treated.
- Larry Neal talked about what the Black Arts movement is really about and what it is envisioned
- The oratory of the civil rights and Black Power movements was delivered by ministries and black church affiliated leaders accustomed to inspiring mass congregation with "the word"
- Poetry was the creative genre that saw the most accomplished experimental and distinguished work by the black artists of the 60s.
- The Black Arts movement was committed to a goal of black mass communication.
- The treatment of Africans as a subject in all genres of Black Arts writing is a direct result of the black nationalist impulse to construct a myth of orgins for Africans in America
- Ancestors of the Black Arts: Langston Hughes, W.E.B Du Bois, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright
- Controversies of the Black Arts movement: Anti-semtism, Misogomy, Homophobia.
- The Black Arts movement gained strength from both journals and publishers and black studies programs on American university campuses
- Black Arts were striving for a new level of regional specificity and representation.
- Audre Lorde, Lucille Clifton, June Jordan, Michael Harper, Ishmael Reed, Toni Cade - were all deemed as successors to the Black Arts movement