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 accomplishments of artists of the Harlem Renaissance.
Robert Beck, better known as Iceberg Slim, was an American pimp who later became a writer. Beck's 1967 memoir, Pimp: The Story of My Life sold very well, mainly among Black audiences. By 1973, it had been reprinted 19 times and had sold nearly 2 million copies. Pimp was eventually translated into German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, and Greek. He also wrote novels such as Trick Baby.
Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song is a 1971 American independent blaxploitation action thriller film written, co-produced, scored, edited, directed by, and starring Melvin Van Peebles. His son Mario Van Peebles also appears in a small role, playing the title character as a young boy. The film tells the picaresque story of a poor black man fleeing from the white police authorities.
Grove Press is an American publishing imprint that was founded in 1947. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, and Zebra. Barney Rosset purchased the company in 1951 and turned it into an alternative book press in the United States. He partnered with Richard Seaver to bring French literature to the United States. The Atlantic Monthly Press, under the aegis of its publisher, Morgan Entrekin, merged with Grove Press in 1993. Grove later became an imprint of the publisher Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Jazz poetry has been defined as poetry that "demonstrates jazz-like rhythm or the feel of improvisation" and also as poetry that takes jazz music, musicians, or the jazz milieu as its subject, and is designed to be performed. Some critics consider it a distinct genre though others consider the term to be merely descriptive. Jazz poetry has long been something of an "outsider" art form that exists somewhere outside the mainstream, having been conceived in the 1920s by African Americans, maintained in the 1950s by counterculture poets like those of the Beat generation, and adapted in modern times into hip-hop music and live poetry events known as poetry slams.
Umbra was a collective of young black writers based in Manhattan's Lower East Side that was founded in 1962.
Paul Carter Harrison was an American playwright and professor. Harrison was known for works such as his Obie Award winning play The Great MacDaddy and scholarly writings on theater and performance. Between 1962 and 1982, he produced or directed numerous American and Dutch plays and screenplays.
Canongate Books is an independent publishing firm based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Hettie Jones was an American poet. She wrote 23 books that include a memoir of the Beat Generation, three volumes of poetry, and publications for children and young adults, including The Trees Stand Shining and Big Star Fallin' Mama: Five Women in Black Music.
Clarence L. Cooper Jr. was an American author.
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. Baraka's plays, poetry, and essays have been described by scholars as constituting defining texts for African-American culture.
Dutchman is a play written by playwright Amiri Baraka, then known as LeRoi Jones. Dutchman was first presented at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village, New York City, in March 1964 co-produced by Rita Fredricks. The play won an Obie Award; it shared this distinction with Adrienne Kennedy's Funnyhouse of a Negro. Baraka's stage play was made into a film in 1967, starring Shirley Knight and Al Freeman Jr. Dutchman was the last play produced by Baraka under his birth name, LeRoi Jones. At the time, he was in the process of divorcing his Jewish wife, Hettie Jones, embracing Black nationalism, and after lamenting the death of Malcolm X in 1965. Dutchman may be described as a political allegory depicting black and white relations during the time Baraka wrote it. With Dutchman and his other works, Baraka was a respected playwright among other figures in the Black Arts Movement.
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.
Black Classic Press (BCP) is an African-American book publishing company, founded by W. Paul Coates in 1978. Since then, BCP has published original titles by notable authors including Walter Mosley, John Henrik Clarke, E. Ethelbert Miller, Yosef Ben-Jochannan, and Dorothy B. Porter, as well as reissuing significant works by Tony Martin, Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edward Blyden, J. E. Casely Hayford, Bobby Seale, J. A. Rogers, and others.
The Cricket, subtitled "Black Music in Evolution", was a magazine created in 1968 by Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal and A. B. Spellman. Baraka has said: "Larry Neal, AB and I realized the historical influence of music on African /Afro American Culture. I saw the magazine as a necessary dispenser of this influence as part of a continuum. And that attention to the culture was a way of drawing attention to the people's needs and struggle." The headquarters was in New York City.
Players was an American monthly softcore men's magazine. It was often nicknamed "the black Playboy" for its attempt at providing the African-American public with a racy, yet elegant reading choice. Once new black-centric magazines came in to the fold, publications such as The Messenger, Opportunity, and The Crisis would regularly show and portray photographs and short descriptions of Black life in America, specifically Women, to enlighten the masses as both moral and aspirational figures. These images were originally to challenge racist stereotypes, but would turn it on its head to create a vision of empowerment. Players Magazine would come along, as it would take this narrative and flip it to a sexualized state, which would change the world of snuff magazines. Players Magazine, amongst the others before it, attempted to end the narrative of ignorance towards Black life or the everyday representation of Black people.
Amina Baraka is an American poet, actress, author, community organizer, singer, dancer, and activist. Her poetic themes are about social justice, family, and women. Her poetry has been featured in anthologies including Unsettling America (1994). She was active in the 1960s Black Arts Movement, as an artist.
Edward Vaughn was an American politician, businessman, and activist who served as a member of the Michigan House of Representatives from 1979 to 1980 and again from 1995 to 2000.
Black Arts/West was a nationally known African American theater founded in 1969 in Seattle, Washington, by playwright Douglas Q. Barnett. Barnett's New Group Theater started in 1961. Black Arts/West formally began as a performing arts program in 1967 with the social services agency CAMP. The theater established an office in a theatrical space in 1969. In 1973 they transitioned from being a community theater company to a professional theatrical ensemble, and received funding from sources such as the National Endowment for the Arts and the Washington State and Seattle Arts Commission. It hosted over 32 plays and other performances before its closure in 1980. In 2020, the location of the theater on East Union Street between 34th and 35th avenues was named in honor of Douglas Q. Barnett.
