Journal response to The Social Background of the Black Arts Movement

In the article, “The Social Background of the Black Arts Movement,” author Larry Neal, co-editor of Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing with Amiri Baraka, explores what was happening in society surrounding the Black Arts Movement. He begins by noting that Philadelphia riots, Harlem riots, and the Bay of Pigs. Civil Rights Movement was happening as was the question of how literature and writers would move forward with all the civil rights occurrences. Larry Neal became interested in what was going on in Africa and other third world countries, as well as Afro-Americans after reading a magazine that came out of Paris, but had offices in New York which he found “a revelation” (11). Neal breaks down the happenings of the time into various blocks of information such as “Ideological Discussions,” “Muntu,” “Growth of Black Periodicals,” and “Rhythm and Blues and History” to name a few.

                  The magazine, Revolution: Africa, Asia, and Latin America provided Neal exciting material that somewhat reflected what discussions he and others were having in Philadelphia about neo-African culture or Muntu. The magazine had  “all of these interesting African terms juxtaposed against something about the blues” (12). Muntu explored African culture and values and Neal found that this mirrored what “[w]e had been talking about these things in the context of the political struggle, that is the role of the artist in the political struggle, but also about poetry itself and literature itself and how it could become more dynamic” (12) He discusses that the group of writers of his day felt a disconnect between the way they wrote and a strict literary approach and so Muntu helped open their approach to something more dynamic, helping them feel more comfortable with their craft. Neal then goes on to speak about Leroi Jones who wrote Blues People, “the first comprehensive book by an Afro-American writer about the blues” (12). Despite writing him a letter that was unanswered, Neal did eventually meet him in New York saying, “the nationalists used to speak at 125^th street and 7^th Avenue [a]nd a large part of their discussion was the role of the black man and his destiny in the [Vietnam] war” (12). He describes this as the first time he had experienced such discussion surrounding these types of ideas. Next, the language began to change and grow, encompassing more names and terms such as “Ghana, West Africa, Cuba, Marxism, dialectical this, dialectical that, superstructure, relevancy” (13). Neal and others felt excited that this literature was on the rise both publicly and privately. He speaks about how the artist of the time was more public than they used to be and that some even took to street corners. Writers as activists became a concept to explore during this time which he then transitions into highlighting Martin Luther King, ed Davis, and Malcom X. Neal claims, “[t]he poet began to listen to both of these types and to make decisions as to which one was speaking to him or her, which mode of address was the most useful” (13).Urban types went with Malcom X, while Southern folk rhythms went with King. In music Afro-American culture identified with John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, and Ralph Ellison to name a few which had a passionate, piercing sound that accompanied many parties in which these writers and other artists attended that helped disperse these new ideas and thoughts among the groups. Leroi Jones then became more of a revolutionary publishing a magazine called Information. Grove Press published a lot of “certain kinds of radical literary and political ideas” (16). Neal delves into tensions and violence stating:

We had seen a lot of violence. We were in many ways violent although we kept it cool. We were ready for violence. We were conditioned as young black urban people in the North to deal with violence. And everybody knew violence was wrong. But in Fanon we found the intellectual justification for violence that we didn’t have before. (16).

Neal states that with Fanon, came another shift in language and vocabulary; “[t]he only existence we have is really through language anyway” (17). Fanon helped pull together definitions and helped with a wholistic vision. Later, with Malcom X’s assassination, Neal describes this was a heavy moment but that it gave birth to the Black Arts Theatre in Harlem which opened with poetry readings and was very popular. Poetry readings dispersed everywhere, much like the jazz music of the time. Rhythm and Blues also came onto the scene, influencing the artists of the time. Neal concludes that “finally, all these ideas were beginning to extend into one kind of ball . . . we had music as a force of judgement . . . we also had a place, ritually, symbolically, a place where whites don’t go—a psychic zone that should not be intruded upon” (22). Neal claims, “black people wanted to find out who they were without someone looking over their shoulder” and that’s what they created through years of art, culture, and social understanding.

This article does a fantastic job of laying out all the moving parts of this portion of history. Neal does a great job of going step-by-step and unraveling history in a clear and informative way. His voice is very personable and easy to follow, not buried in literary terms that the reader has to sift through which helps paint a very real and relatable scene for this era of the Black Arts Movement.

The Black Scholar, January/February 1987, Vol. 18. No. 1, Black American Culture in the Second Renaissance. Pp 11-22.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41068165.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default%3Aea003f73b5a5b79fdfd7e77e2c150f93&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&initiator=&acceptTC=1