BAM: A Living Legacy

Lasana Kazembe, Ph.D.

Nelson Stevens, Uhuru (1971)

Stimulated by the assassination of Malcolm X, the Black Arts Movement (1965-1976) was a cultural movement initially influenced by writer and activist Amiri Baraka. The movement was borne out of the synthesis of creative energy, Black consciousness, and political activism among young Black artists residing in New York during mid-1960s (Thomas, 1978). While concentrated primarily in New York City, Black Arts activities were also quite popular in other American cities including Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Houston, New Orleans, and Oakland. 

By realizing and creating conscious connections between creative art, African culture, and politics, Black artists (poets, writers, sculptors, musicians, painters, performance artists, etc.) sought to articulate and assist in the physical, psychological, and spiritual liberation of Black people in America and throughout the African Diaspora. Addison Gayle, Jr. (1970, 1971, 1972), Larry Neal (1968, 1989), and Hoyt Fuller (1972) were the major philosophical voices of the Black Arts era. They argued for and subsequently developed a theoretical basis and philosophical framework referred to as The Black Aesthetic. In some sense, the need for a Black Aesthetic evolved with “mounting emphasis” based on the particular western socialization of the Black psyche, as a patterned response to institutionalized racism, and the need for change (Emanuel, 1972).

Black artists pursued what Benston (2000) calls a “speculative quest for a distinctively Black modality of cultural assertion” (p. 251). Black artists sought to situate their creative products (literature, drama, music, theater, portraiture, etc.,) as cultural assets. This new aesthetic encouraged Black artists to resist White artistic norms while simultaneously articulating and confirming the cultural uniqueness of Black identities, art forms, purposes, and impressions of social reality (Van DeBurg, 1992). Thus, Black artists representing multiple genres engaged in a structured, geographically diverse, decade-plus long revolution of ideas and recapitulation of thought-forms, theoretical considerations, and philosophical (op)positionality.