''My work is your inspiration and your inspiration is my work. [1]
Che Baraka (born 1953) is an American mixed media artist whose conceptional and abstract paintings have been exhibited across the United States. [2] Baraka was born in Chicago, Illinois. His work has been included in numerous exhibitions and collections throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico. [3]
Baraka moved to Jackson, Mississippi, when he was six. He later lived in San Antonio, Texas, and New Orleans, Louisiana. [4] In Mississippi, Baraka "was exposed to the profound beginnings of America's Civil rights movement that had began[ sic ] in Birmingham Alabama with the young Baptist minister, Martin Luther King." [4] Exeter Academy showed interest in the young artist and sent a scholar to recruit him. [4]
His spiritual guide and first mentor was a young civil rights activist, Jesse Morris. Thanks to him, Baraka developed his creativity and expanded his views of the world. [5]
Baraka attended the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, New York, graduating with honors and a BFA. [3] [4] He received an MFA in Arts Administration at New York University. [4]
Andrew Goodman was an American activist. He was one of three Civil Rights Movement activists murdered during Freedom Summer in 1964 by members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Medgar Wiley Evers was an American civil rights activist in Mississippi, the state's field secretary for the NAACP, and a World War II veteran who had served in the United States Army. He worked to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi, end the segregation of public facilities, and expand opportunities for African Americans, which included the enforcement of voting rights.
James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, playwright, essayist, poet, and activist. His essays, collected in Notes of a Native Son (1955), explore intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in the Western society of the United States during the mid twentieth-century. Some of Baldwin's essays are book-length, including The Fire Next Time (1963), No Name in the Street (1972), and The Devil Finds Work (1976). An unfinished manuscript, Remember This House, was expanded and adapted for cinema as the Academy Award-nominated documentary film I Am Not Your Negro (2016). One of his novels, If Beale Street Could Talk, was adapted into the Academy Award-winning film of the same name in 2018, directed and produced by Barry Jenkins.
The Black Arts Movement (BAM) was an African American-led art movement, active during the 1960s and 1970s. Through activism and art, BAM created new cultural institutions and conveyed a message of black pride.
Thomas Richard Paxton is an American folk singer-songwriter who has had a music career spanning more than fifty years. In 2009, Paxton received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He is noteworthy as a music educator as well as an advocate for folk singers to combine traditional songs with new compositions.
Kevin Powell is an American writer, civil and human rights activist, poet, journalist, public speaker, filmmaker, politician, television personality, and entrepreneur. Powell is the author of 14 books, including The Education of Kevin Powell: A Boy's Journey into Manhood and When We Free the World published in 2020. Powell routinely appears in interviews on television, radio, in print and on the Internet discussing major social and political issues, and his writing has appeared in numerous media outlets. As a senior writer during the founding years of VIBE magazine from 1992 to 1996, Powell interviewed a diverse array of public figures from Tupac Shakur to General Colin Powell. He routinely travels nationally and globally as a public speaker, at colleges and corporations, at various institutions, and a wide range of communities.
Amiri Baraka, previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka, was an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays and music criticism. He was the author of numerous books of poetry and taught at several universities, including the University at Buffalo and Stony Brook University. He received the PEN/Beyond Margins Award in 2008 for Tales of the Out and the Gone.
Emory Douglas is an American graphic artist. He was a member of the Black Panther Party from 1967 until the Party disbanded in the 1980s. As a revolutionary artist and the Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party, Douglas created iconography to represent black-American oppression.
The Freedom Singers originated as a student quartet formed in 1962 at Albany State College in Albany, Georgia. After folk singer Pete Seeger witnessed the power of their congregational-style of singing, which fused black Baptist a cappella church singing with protest songs and chants, their performances drew aid and support to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during the emerging civil rights movement. Seeger suggested The Freedom Singers as a touring group to the SNCC executive secretary James Forman as a way to fuel future campaigns. As a result, communal song became essential to empowering and educating audiences about civil rights issues and a powerful social weapon of influence in the fight against Jim Crow segregation. Rutha Mae Harris, a former freedom singer, speculated that without the music force of broad communal singing, the civil rights movement may not have resonated beyond of the struggles of the Jim Crow South.
The Poet Laureate of New Jersey was an honor presented biennially by the Governor of New Jersey to a distinguished New Jersey poet. Created in 1999, this position existed for less than four years and was abolished by the legislature effective July 2, 2003. When the New Jersey State Legislature created the laureate position, the bill provided specifically for the creation of an award named in honor of twentieth-century poet and physician William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) who resided in Rutherford, New Jersey. However, the legislature recognized that the award's recipient would "be considered the poet laureate of the State of New Jersey for a period of two years." Before the position was abolished, only two poets, Gerald Stern and Amiri Baraka, had been appointed as the state's poet laureate.
Skip Blumberg is one of the original camcorder-for-broadcast TV producers, and among the first wave of video artists in the 1970s. His early work reflects the era's emphasis on guerrilla tactics and medium-specific graphics, but his more recent work takes on more global issues. His work has screened widely on television and at museums. His video Pick Up Your Feet: The Double Dutch Show (1981) is considered a classic documentary video and was included in the Museum of Television and Radio's exhibition TV Critics' All-time Favorite Shows. His cultural documentaries and performance videos have been broadcast on PBS, National Geographic TV, Showtime, Bravo, Nickelodeon, among others.
The Outlaws of Printmaking, also known as "The Outlaws" and "Outlaw Printmakers" are a collective of printmaking artists that exists internationally. The idea of "Outlaw Printmakers" formed from a show in New York at Big Cat Gallery in 2000. Tony Fitzpatrick, the owner of the Big Cat Press which is associated with the gallery, decided to call a show there "Outlaw Printmaking" to reflect attitudes of the printmakers involved in a non-academic approach to prints. As pointed out by Sean Starwars, the Southern Graphic Council print conference was happening at the same time as that show in NYC across the water in New Jersey. A handful of artists from the conference attended the show.). At that conference the core group now known as the Outlaw Printmakers formed, adopting the name from the show and continuing their own events, happenings and shows outside of the academic norm. The core members are Bill Fick, Tom Huck, The Hancock Brothers, Sean Star Wars, Dennis McNett and Cannonball Press. Many of the core artists associated with the movement cite the printmaker/artist Richard Mock as a primary influence. Mock's political and social narrative prints appeared in the New York Times op-ed pages for more than a decade in the 1980s and early 1990s. Later the group grew to include Carlos Hernandez, Drive By Press, Ryan O'Malley, Artemio Rodriguez, Kathryn Polk, Erica Walker, Derrick Riley, and Julia Curran.
Otto Neals is an American painter and sculptor. Originally from South Carolina, he came to New York at four years old and began painting as a child. He spent most of career working as an illustrator at the Brooklyn Post Office, and pursued independent art projects on nights and weekends. Now in his eighties, he still resides in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. This self-taught artist still spends a full day creating his art just as he has done for over 76 years. Although he works out of his basement, he prefers his backyard when weather permits.
Emmett Wigglesworth is a muralist, painter, sculptor, fabric designer, poet and civil rights activist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He has resided in New York since 1958. Wigglesworth is known for his abstract and colorful murals that he says are inspired by his own cultural heritage and life experience.
Weusi Artist Collective is an organization of African-American artists, established in 1965, based in the Harlem section of New York City. Inspired by the Black Arts Movement, the members of the Weusi Artist Collective create art invoking African themes and symbols. The organization was a major driving force behind the development, production and dissemination of black art in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s.
Kay Brown (1932-2012) was an African American artist and published author. She was also the first woman awarded a membership into the Weusi Artist Collective, based in Harlem during the 1960s and 1970s. The Weusi Collective, named for the Swahili word for “blackness”, was founded in 1965, composed entirely of men. The fact that she was the only female member of this collective inspired her to seek out ways of representing the neglected Black female artists. She is widely acknowledged as one of the founders of the Where We At Black women artists' collective in New York City. Brown’s works are credited for representing issues that affected the global Black community via her mixed media collages and prints. Brown's work was featured in the "We Wanted a Revolution" exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum.
Joe Wesley Overstreet was an African-American painter from Mississippi who lived and worked in New York City for most of his career. In the 1950s and early 1960s he was associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement.
Mary Lovelace O'Neal is an American artist and arts educator. Her work is focused on abstracted mixed-media and minimalism. She is a Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley and retired from teaching in 2006. O'Neal's art has been exhibited widely throughout North America and internationally, with group and solo shows in Italy, France, Chile, Senegal and Nigeria. She lives and works in Oakland, California, and maintains a studio in Chile.
Jitu Weusi was an American educator, education advocate, author, a community leader, writer, activist, mentor, jazz and art program promoter. He is one of the founders of the National Black United Front, Jitu Weusi Institute for Development, and the International African Arts Festival. The festival started in 1971.
The National LGBTQ Wall of Honor is an American memorial wall dedicated to LGBTQ “pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes”. Unveiled at the Stonewall Inn in June 2019, as part of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, the installation is located within the Stonewall National Monument, the first U.S. National Monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights and history in the United States.