Black Arts Movement
by
If one is going to think about the Black Arts Movement (BAM) as a set of keywords, it is important to consider the component words separately, as well as how they work together in describing the black radical cultural movement of the 1960s and 1970s that was inextricably linked to Black Power. That is not simply a question of defining the denotative meanings of “Black,” “Arts,” and “Movement” but also of the qualities of those words in how they combine during the Black Power / Black Arts moment. No doubt “black” is defined elsewhere in this volume and does not need extended treatment here. However, it is worth noting, as John Bracey Jr. does (2014), that when “black” as a term of identification and solidarity was increasingly deployed, largely through the influence of Malcolm X, it was to a considerable extent a gesture of opposition, of rejection, of rebellion, that needed a more elaborated positive content. In other words, what did it mean to be black? One way of looking at the Black Arts Movement is as a sort of investigation of what it meant to be black, of what was the basic cultural, spiritual, and intellectual material of blackness...
This essay may be found on page 19 of the printed volume.