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The Black Arts Movement prompted Black artists to counter the marginalization of Black culture within a white hegemonic society by celebrating the profound and diverse contributions within the African diaspora.
This 1960s and 1970s cultural movement, begun by African American artists and intellectuals based in the United States, arose during a time when Black people around the world were engaged in struggles for liberation and equality—from the Black Power movement to decolonization efforts across the African continent—to promote Black self-determinati...
- Amiri Baraka
- Gwendolyn Brooks
- Nikki Giovanni
- Lorraine Hansberry
Amiri Baraka was born Everett LeRoi Jones in Newark, New Jersey on October 7, 1934. In 1954 he earned a bachelor’s degree in English at Howard University. Following graduation, Jones joined the military and served three years in the Air Force. After receiving a honorable discharge, he settled in Greenwich Village in New York and began to interact w...
Gwendolyn Brooks was an American poet and teacher and is known as the first African American woman to win a Pulitzer when she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her work Annie Allen (1950). Brooks was born on June 7, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas. Six weeks after her birth, the Brooks family moved to Chicago. Growing up in Chicago and attending...
Nikki Giovanni is an American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. Giovanni was born as Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. on June 7, 1943 in Knoxville, Tennessee. She attended Fisk University receiving a B.A. in History and later went on to attend graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. Giovanni...
A native of Chicago, Illinois Lorraine Hansberry is known as one of the most significant and influential playwrights of the 20th century. She wrote the landmark play A Raisin in the Sun, which opened at Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York City in 1959. A Raisin in the Sunwas the first play written by an African American woman to be produced on Broa...
Drawing on chants, slogans, and rituals of call and response, Black Arts poetry was meant to be politically galvanizing. Because of its politics—as well as what some saw as its potentially homophobic, sexist, and anti-Semitic elements—the Black Arts Movement was one of the most controversial literary movements in US history.
The Black Arts Movement (BAM) was an African American-led art movement that was active during the 1960s and 1970s. Through activism and art, BAM created new cultural institutions and conveyed a message of black pride. The movement expanded from the incredible accomplishments of artists of the Harlem Renaissance.
Black Arts movement, period of artistic and literary development among black Americans in the 1960s and early ’70s. Based on the cultural politics of black nationalism, which were developed into a set of theories referred to as the Black Aesthetic, the movement sought to create a populist art form.
The Black Arts and the Black Power concept both related broadly to the Afro-American’s desire for self-determination and nationhood.” The artists within the Black Arts Movement sought to create politically engaged work that explored the African American cultural and historical experience and transformed the way African Americans were ...
