The Black Arts Movement was a movement that began in the mid-1960s, that solidified the arts-activism of Amiri Baraka. Amiri Baraka was a Black American writer who wrote in the genres of poetry, drama, fiction, and music criticism. Baraka, a New jersey native, used his ideas, and platform to publish provocative works that underlined the oppression and suppressed anger of Black people in America. His work was often considered highly inappropriate and he was thought of as a radical person politically. He even was discharged from the U.S. Air force because he was suspected to have communist affiliations. Though his works were raunchy and were not necessarily acceptable for institutional purposes, they gave some of the most accurate explanations of the feelings Black people had towards the injustices they were facing during that time. When Malcom X was assassinated in 1965, Baraka and those who embraced the Black Power Movement called for poetry, novels, visual arts, and theatre works to be created to reflect black pride in black history and culture. This call for Black art that was an affirmation of autonomy of Black artists to create African American art for Black people gave means to awake Black consciousness and achieve liberation. The Black Arts Movement began here, in 1965, when Baraka opened the Black Arts Repertory Theater in Harlem, New York. The movement spread from New York to Chicago, Detroit, and San Francisco and its biggest impact was in the areas of theater and poetry. In Chicago, Illinois, two men named Hoyt Fuller and John Johnson made the Negro Digest which prompted the works of new Black literary artists. In Michigan and California, publishing companies began publishing Black Literature as scholarly journal to make way for more Black studies in the world of academia. While this movement seems rather peaceful, its raw shock value usually embraced violence within both the black and white mainstream culture. Many of the works within this movement were considered sexist, racist, homophobic, and anti-sematic. As for Black women during this movement, they used and sacrificed their voices to produce pieces about Black hyper masculinity in response to the humiliation and degradation of Black men.
I know Baraka’s movement was inappropriate for the purposes of academia, but I believe that is what prompted society to use their voice for the good of everyone. The Arts movement showed Black people that they could, in fact, change the world with just establishing the injustices they faced and displaying that in creative, artistic ways. This was shown towards the end of the movement when Baraka and other figures achieved cultural recognition and economic success as their works were beginning to be celebrated by White mainstream society. These were achievements unthought of before the movement began. This movement was necessary to happen after the assassination of Malcom X because he prominent place in society left the Black community fearful of what could happen to them if they were as outspoken as Malcom X. The Black Arts Movement left so many timeless pieces of literature, poetry, and theater and headed what we now know today as African American Literature.
