Themes of Self Awareness and Black Pride Found in the Black Arts Movement

           Africans and their descendants have been a part of the story of the Americas at to the lowest degree since 1619. They were transported to these shores by Europeans in specially synthetic ships with platforms below the deck designed to maximize the number of enslaved Africans they could haul. Fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters were confined for upwards to three months, shackled in irons while crossing the Atlantic Bounding main. The filthy conditions and poor diet made information technology inevitable that there would be a loftier mortality rate. By the fourth dimension they reached their destination, nearly half were dead. The road is sometimes referred to as the Eye Passage, although increasingly it is being called the Maafa––Kiswahili pregnant "keen disaster or unimaginable horror."¹

I returned on board to aid in stowing i hundred and eight boys and girls, the eldest of whom did not exceed fifteen years. As I crawled between decks, I confess I could not imagine how this little army was to be packed or draw jiff in a hole simply twenty-two inches loftier. Theodore Canot²

Slavery was sanctioned by law until the Emancipation annunciation of 1863 only continued in practice for many years. One of the final slavery convictions in the U.s. was obtained on May xiv, 1954.³ And then, information technology is no wonder and then, to counter this unremitting erosion of Blackness rights and the increased disfranchisement caused by living in a culture that condones Southern terrorism and Northern indifference, white supremacy, lynching, and bigotry that dissension and resistance took identify. Negroes fought not but to break the chains that jump them but as well for their civil liberties and the freedom to fully participate in and contribute to American society. Eventually, equally they moved forward in gaining some of their social, economic, and political freedoms, Negroes were able to turn their attention to nurturing the creative aspects of their life––the he(art) and soul of their identity.

The Soul-Worlds within African American Fine art

Within the next decade, I expect to see the work of a growing school of colored artists who pigment and model the dazzler of dark faces and create, with new techniques the expressions, of their own soul-globe. Langston Hughes⁴

              Africans brought to this land did non come up void of cultural antecedents. They brought with them an infrastructure that was religious, political, historical, spiritual, and psychological on which they relied to make sense of their earth.⁵ Nonetheless, while the enslaved Africans had this predisposed aesthetic, the content of their fine art was invariably changed as the result of their American slave feel. Thus, the artful of the enslaved people was no longer purely African, but rather a mixture of African comingled with that of their captors.

              Consider also, for anyone who chooses, crossing boundaries from one cultural tradition to another requires noesis of that tradition, comprehensive study, and acquisition of technical skills with specialized materials. For Negro artists, isolation, poverty, and segregation initially prevented them from having access to implements, such as brushes, paper, sail, and modeling tools, to fully engage in Western artistic traditions. Even so, Negroes adapted their skills to fit their time and identify. During the Colonial, Federalist, and Antebellum years drums, jewelry, wrought-atomic number 26 figures, ceramic face vessels, and domestic architecture have been found in quondam enslaved Negro communities. After the Civil War ended, Negroes began to assimilate into the larger population of American society, which was however inventing itself. All the same, by the 1860s and 1870s, pocket-sized numbers of Negro artists were receiving academic training in the utilise of Western creative traditions. Neo-classical sculptor, Edmonia Lewis, and Hudson River landscape painter Robert South. Duncanson, along with moody, Barbizon Schoolhouse-like painters Edward Mitchell Bannister, and William Harper are good examples. In contrast, several artists, including Henry Ossawa Tanner, found that the burden of racism and the force per unit area of having to represent their race, so overwhelming they chose to motion away to places such as Paris.  Meanwhile, Negro folk artists were creating inventive cloth art, especially textile appliqués and quilts.^six By the beginning of the twentieth century, some Negroes were considered skilled artists of merit by the Western mainstream fine art world.

              Later, after drought and the boll weevil decimated the cotton fiber crop in the South, almost two 1000000 Negroes moved northward. This journey would come to be known as The Groovy Migration (1915 – 1920). No longer isolated in the "Jim Crow" South, large populations of Negroes moved into major urban communities. Eventually, every bit advancements were made in teaching and employment, a Negro middle-class developed. The new Blackness bourgeois, along with White patrons, valued and fostered the creativity of Negro artists. Consequently, for the first time, these artists began crossing over, in sizeable numbers, into the borderlands of the mainstream art earth. What is more, as they found their vocalism and an audition to hear, more Negro artists sought to heal the damage of racism by validating the Negro experience. They presented positive images of Negro life to counteract negative stereotypes that existed at the time. Their work was ofttimes uplifting, heroic, and sympathetic portrayals of Negroes and Negro life. Archibald J Motley, Jr.'s, Barbecue (1934), merges Motley's preoccupation with light at night with his focus on Black city nightlife and typifies the genre with its silhouetted figures and jazzy mood.

            During that time, a major influence was sociologist and scholar, Due west. E. B. Dubois. His watershed book, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), speaks of parallel realities or racial universes.  He reveals much and navigates an emotive journey into the meaning of beingness a Negro at the kickoff of the twentieth century; feeling the struggle of twoness––the dichotomy of being Black and being American; and experiencing the necrosis of spirit that sets in when a race lives generation afterward generation without respect for self. Dr. DuBois is thought past many to exist the "Father" of Pan-Africanism. He believed in the thought that 1 African soul unites Negroes across Africa with each other and with Negroes in the Americas as well.^seven He was not alone in his confidence. Stirred by the idea of a Pan-Africanism, several historical periods in African American art emerged in which large groups of artists produced a surge of artistic activity that focused on Africa, for both political and spiritual reasons. The first was the "New Negro Movement," which grew into the Harlem Renaissance, a renaissance in drama, literature, visual arts, and music.

               In 1925, Alain Locke, Harvard graduate and Rhodes Scholar, published The New Negro, an anthology of diverse creative writings by Negroes. This anthology became what many consider the manifesto of a new Black American artistic motion that took hold and flowered in New York'south Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s. Negro artists must not only participate and collaborate with the mainstream fine art world, according to Locke, simply they as well need to reclaim their African legacy and draw inspiration from African art by incorporating aesthetico-racial African elements into their piece of work.^eight The institution of slavery broke the connections to these artful traditions and Afro-Americans who did non reconnect past preserving, enhancing, and promoting their own rich heritage alienated "themselves from the uniquely creative possibilities of their natural racial heritage."^nine Locke was evangelical in advocating for this position. He led past example and not but wrote about the importance of preserving an African connexion merely also collected African art and provided opportunities for artists to study, produce, and exhibit. Indeed, through the efforts of Locke and others, Africa became one of the unifying inspirations amid artists of the Harlem Renaissance that spread beyond America.

               The philosophy of the movement combines realism, indigenous consciousness, and Americanism. The artists were united in their sense of participating in a common endeavour and their commitment to giving aesthetic expression to the Negro feel. Sculptor Richard Barthé's, Supplication, is 1 example. Modeled afterward Michelangelo's Pieta, he depicts a Negro mother property the torso of her lynched son. Other common themes of the Harlem Renaissance included the southern Black experience, such as William Edouard Scott's The Turkey Market (1932); a strong sense of racial pride, for case, Allan Rohan Crite'due south School'southward Out (1936); and the desire for socio-political equality which tin can be seen Sargent Johnson'south Forever Complimentary (1933). This starting time catamenia of intense creative activity was, notwithstanding, heavily dependent upon White patronage. Therefore, later on the stock market crash of 1929, it never regained its footing.¹⁰ Notwithstanding, the influence of the Harlem Renaissance continued to be felt. The paradigm shift from a European aesthetic center to one that values an African heritage enabled many African American artists to articulate a perspective in harmony with their ancestral roots.

              From the depression to the early 1960s, Negro artists continued to balance responsiveness to racial bug, which tended to be representational, and absorption into the White mainstream art world that emphasizes brainchild. For instance, Hale Woodruff integrated African motifs into his paintings, while abstruse painters, such as Norman Lewis, focused on the vigor and disharmonize underlying abstruse forms. Meanwhile, numerous Negro artists were participating in the Federal Arts Projects of the Works Progress Administration, ane of whom was painter Aaron Douglas (1898-1979). Produced as part of the WPA art program, Douglas's Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery Through Reconstruction (1934), showed the progress of Negroes and made their past role of their present. Historian Nathan Huggins idea that Douglas's endeavor to "translate what he understood to exist the spiritual identity of the Negro people was a kind of soul of self that united all that the Black human was in Africa and the New Earth."^xi As a result of their piece of work in the WPA, several artists gained national prominence. Ane of the most famous in this group is, perhaps, painter Jacob Lawrence. His series on subjects such as John Chocolate-brown, the Haitian revolution, Harlem, and the Great Migration spoke, in an emotive manner, to the hearts of the people.

            There were several artists from the 1930s and 1940s, including painters Lois Mailou Jones and John Biggers, and sculptor and printmaker Elizabeth Catlett who would re-emerge in the 1960s. They acted as a link that continued the artful concerns of the past to those of the future. They did then by not only supporting the vision of the younger generation of Blackness artists, but also past creating works themselves that highlighted their shared interest in African aesthetic sensibilities, the Blackness figure, and the continuing struggle for civil liberties.

Black is Beautiful and the Notion of a Black Aesthetic

The acceptance of the phrase, "Blackness is Beautiful," is the first step in the devastation of the old table of the laws and the structure of the new ones, for the phrase flies in the face of the whole ethos of the white aesthetic. This pace must be followed by serious scholarship and hard work; and Black critics must dig beneath the phrase and unearth the treasure of dazzler lies deep in the un-toured regions of the Black experience, regions where others, due to historical workout and cultural deprivation, can not go. Addison Gayle, Jr.¹²

               Afterward hundreds of years of being told that their hair is not direct enough, their lips are not sparse enough, their skin is not calorie-free enough, Black Americans became agents of their own identity. Past the 1960s, frustration with the lack of civil rights progress and outrage over discrimination caused a epitome shift for many Afro-Americans from calm discontent to confrontational ultimatums. Their rhetoric was charged with demands for immediate social, political, economic, and cultural change. This demand was shouted out in the mode they wore their Afro hair, their style of African and militant apparel, and most importantly, the content and passion of their fine art. Large numbers of Afro-American artists actively participated in the fight for power and freedom just did and then in varying ways.  Some chose to accept direct action by supporting and taking office in political deportment equally they continue to create artwork in conventional artistic genres within the establishment, while others chose to reframe their artwork in a political context. Thus, their art became a vehicle for alter in the Black revolution. These artists were the aesthetico-political support of the Black Power movement and frequently met in groups to explore how they could all-time serve the needs of the customs and advance the cause. As more and more work was produced and exhibited, withal, attention was fatigued not but to the content but also the quality of the piece of work. Every bit the need for "Black art" increased, the mainstream art world, forth with segments of the Black artistic community, raised several significant questions. What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for a piece of work of art to be Black? Is there, or should there be a different standard to judge the "quality" of the piece of work that is labeled "Black"? Does a Black aesthetic be?

             Activists, Ron Karenga, believed that "Black artists and those who wish to exist artists must accept the fact that what is needed is an artful, a Black artful that is criteria for judging the validity and/or the beauty of a work of fine art."^xiii Artist Unhurt Woodruff, as well as others, argues that there is artwork produced by Black artists but there are no specific characteristics that can utilise to all works past Blacks.¹⁴ Julian Mayfield, on the other mitt, proclaims that the Black Aesthetic is, "in our racial retention, and the unshakable knowledge of who nosotros are, where nosotros take been, and, springing up from this, where we are going."¹⁵ Kariamu Welsh-Asante, in her edited book, The African Aesthetic: Keeper of the Tradition (1993), attributes to the African aesthetic responsibility for "art that resembles, mirrors and echoes the creative ethos of a specific or general African people." She goes on to say that an "aesthetic that manifests history, mythology, and values will transcend fourth dimension, geography and boundaries, and the evidence itself in both surface and deep structure".^xvi

              The problem of defining a Black artful is due, in part, to the fact that there are as many forms of creative expression equally there are Blackness artists. For that reason, it is incommunicable to subsume the whole into ane part. All the same, at that place was a type of art produced by Afro- American artists that came from a strong nationalistic base; is characterized past the artist'southward aesthetico-political preoccupation; and uses by and present heroes and events to teach, to inspire, to imbue with pride, and to give promise; and is centered in African heritage, again. It is this category of work that many consider "Black fine art".

             The 2nd surge of fervent inventiveness in African American fine art took place during this politically charged Blackness Ability movement. It adult, out of a need to reconnect to the by, to validate the present, and to shape the futurity. However, to truly put this work and the idea of a Black aesthetic in context, it would be useful to know what the time was similar when Afro-Americans became Black with a upper-case letter "B".

 Say information technology loud. I'one thousand Black and I'g proud!

One of the tragedies of the struggle confronting racism is that...there has been only a civil rights movement whose tone of voice was adapted to an audience of liberal whites. Information technology served every bit a sort of buffer zone between them and angry young Blacks. None of its and then-chosen leaders could go into a rioting community and be listened to. In a sense, I blame ourselves––together with the mass media––for what has happened in Watts, Harlem, Chicago, Cleveland, Omaha. Each time the people in those cities saw Martin Luther King get slapped, they became aroused; when they saw four petty Black girls bombed to decease, they were angrier, and when nothing happened, they were steaming. We had zippo to offering that they could encounter, except to go out and be beaten again. Stokely Carmichael ¹⁷

              The mid-1960s and early 1970s were a fourth dimension of cultural and political upheaval for many people of color in America. It was the time of the Blackness revolution. Information technology was the time for the Black ethnocentrism of Malcolm-X. Information technology was a time set up for the socio-political forcefulness of the Black Panther Party. Information technology was the time for visual representations of the motility created by the Blackness Arts Motion. In other words, it was fourth dimension for changes. Offset in naming. Negro became Afro- American, which and then became Black. African derivatives replaced slave surnames. It was a time of red, black, and green and Black Nationalism. It was a fourth dimension of altered self-consciousness, signified by contradistinct dress and coiffures. It was a time of discontent. No longer are the young Black dissenters going to live with the persistence of racism. They were agents of their destiny who desire something more substantive than a repast in a southern diner. They want reparation (affirmative action) and reclamation (African legacy and aesthetics).

Background: What Happened When

With the dawning of the Historic period of Aquarius, came shifts in events that prompted change–– sometimes with a gentle stir, other times in a violent uproar. Therefore, to put the artful content into context (all art is culturally bound in fourth dimension and place), a cursory chronology is of import.

• In 1963, President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas and that same year over 200,000 people march to the nation'due south uppercase in support of civil rights and equality. Also, in 1963, in New York, African American artists including Charles Alston, Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis, and Hale Woodruff, grade the Spiral Group, dedicated to defining the problems faced by Black artists and to linking art with social responsibleness.
• The following twelvemonth, 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. receives the Nobel Peace Prize and the Ceremonious Rights Act passes, which provides means to enforce nondiscrimination in voting, employment, housing, and other
• It is February 1965, Malcolm X is assassinated in Harlem, NY, and the rise in consciousness of cultural nationalists inspires many African American artists to re-evaluate their art forms and content. Those artists who redefined their artful preoccupations to include Africa and socio-political content came to be known every bit the artists of the Black Arts Motion. The Weusi artist collective forms to produce art by and for the people. Meanwhile, a riot in the Watts section of Los Angeles, California breaks out. Equally a effect, over 30 people were killed. The United states' interest in Vietnam escalates and poor, generally Black youths (the boilerplate age was 19), are drafted to fight. Many did not return. The voting rights act
• In the summer and fall of 1966, 43 cities experience racial violence. That September, 2 Black college students, Huey Newton and Bobby Seal, organized the Black Panther Party.
• The apply of the term, "Black Ability," starts in 1966 during a protest march through Mississippi begun by James Meredith, the get-go Black to attend the University of Mississippi. Meredith was wounded by a sniper during the march and is hospitalized. Carmichael shouts: "What do you desire?" the crowd responds, "Black power." This need acts every bit a counter to the speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. and other Southern Christian Leadership Committee (SCLC) leaders. The Black Ability motility breaks away from the passive turn-the-cheek approach and takes on a more aggressive posture. After that year, Kwanzaa is created by Maulana Karenga, an activist scholar.

• In 1967, riots in Newark, New Jersey, and Detroit Michigan devastated many neighborhoods. Thurgood Marshall is sworn in as the get-go Black US Supreme Court Justice. Several members who would later form the organisation AfriCobra painted the "Wall of Respect" in
• The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee initiates riots that roared beyond the country from Washington, DC to
• July 20, 1969, man kickoff walks on the moon.

• It was in 1970 that Samella Lewis founds The International Quarterly.

• And, in 1971, a group of Brooklyn women artists exhibits the "Where We at Black Women Artists" testify and later forms a group past that name.
• In 1974, Alex Haley's Roots airs on national television.

           The quest for racial dignity, self-reliance, and economic and political power––Black ability––led to the often radical, sometimes rational development of the Black Ability movement. Likewise, during this fourth dimension, Afrocentric artist organizations began to emerge that reverberated the heartbeat of the people in performances, words, sounds, and images.

The Black Revolution and the Black Arts Movement

New talk of Blackness Art re-emerged in America around 1964. It was the Nationalist consciousness reawakened in Blackness people. The sense of identity, and with that opening, a real sense of purpose and management. The sense of who and what we were and what nosotros had to do. Imamu Amiri Baraka ¹⁸

             The Ceremonious Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s was a non-fierce integrated assemblage of people whose strategies included: liberty rides, boycotts, sit-ins, marches, and voter registration drives. During that time, progress was fabricated. Nonetheless, by the mid-1960s, in that location is a spreading feeling among the Black youths that they had waited long enough to be equal and free that information technology is time to stop begging and start enervating. And then, with the clenched fist raised high, the telephone call for "Black Power" resounds beyond the land.

                Afro-Americans leaped over the ideological firewall constructed to forbid full membership as equals in American lodge past using various ways to bring about change. Some Blacks believed that they should ameliorate their own communities rather than striving for complete integration. They besides felt that it was adequate to retaliate against vehement assaults. The leader of this point of view was Malcolm Ten, a Blackness Muslim. Others emphasized the African heritage of Blacks and sought to promote a positive Black identity through instruction in Blackness history and civilisation. Still, others called for the revolutionary political, economic, and cultural liberation of Blacks. Revolutionary nationalists, like Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Toure), advocated a Pan-Africanism that would unite all people of African descent politically and culturally

              Artists who were active in the Blackness Arts Movement attempted to produce art that sprung from the community's needs, concerns, and hopes. They were depicters of the Blackness feel and keepers of the African cultural influence. Coming from this strong nationalistic foundation, some artists set upwards small communities that challenged the hegemony of the art world and the Western notion of fine art. Some chose to focus on fortitude imploring subtle tactics and working within the system, gaining recognition in the mainstream art world, and working for change from within. While others engaged in guerilla-like warfare confronting injustices and lack of power with aesthetico-political proclamations for affecting change. The work of these artists issued from a myriad of places and influences, but they were fatigued together, in many cases, by their need to participate in the struggle for civil liberation and justice. Thus, several arts organizations sprung upwards that provided a forum to instigate socio-political change and to appoint in dialogues concerning of import racial problems of the time. Among the Black art groups were Spiral, Weusi, AfriCobra, and Where We at Blackness Women Artists.

Spiral 1963 – 1965

On July 5, 1993, several artists met at the studio of Romare Bearden to discuss the office of the Negro artist in the fight for civil rights as well as aesthetic problems they had in common.  Hale Woodruff suggested the name, Spiral, Archimedes' spiral that ascends up as it moves from the eye a symbol of progress.¹⁹ Members included Romare Bearden, Hale Woodruff, Charles Alston, Norman Lewis, Richard Mayhew, Felrath Hines, James Yeargens, Emma Amos, Reginald Gammon, Earl Miller, Calvin Douglas, Perry Ferguson, Alvin Hollingsworth, Merton Simpson, William Majors, and Alvin Hollingsworth.

             They were young and onetime, abstract, and realistic artists who were drawn together out of concern for racial injustices and a need to explore their identity as Black artists in a White social club. These artists banned together to substitution ideas, explore possibilities, and defend their passions. During their bi-monthly meetings, they examined the concept of a Black aesthetic;  discussed the possibilities of defining standards; debated the outcome of artistic freedom versus social responsibility; and they searched for points of intersection that would allow them to piece of work as a grouping.  In 1964, they agreed to accept an exhibition of work in black and white as a symbol of the struggle for ceremonious liberties. Although Bearden suggested that the unifying element of the show could be blackness and white collages, but two members thought this was a meaningful idea.  The exhibition was a success, just after, attendance began to wane, as their differences became a dissever rather than an inspiration.  By the fall of 1965, the meetings ended.

Weusi, 1965 - 1990

          Weusi, which means "blackness" in Swahili, non only names an organization of artists only also describes its central focus. Their purpose was to preserve, develop, and promote African American culture through the visual arts. The progenitor of the grouping was an alliance of over fifty artists, The Twentieth Century Creators. The Twentieth Century Creators called for unity and positive indigenous direction in the arts and promoted "Black fine art for Blackness people." Through the leadership of James Sneed, Milika Rahman, and others, this movement led to the institution of the "Annual Harlem Outdoor Art Festival" in 1964.²⁰Looking for an culling community outcome to readapt traditional commercially oriented Christmas celebrations, in 1965, Weusi artists held its first major fundraiser, the "Black Ball" that included dance and an Afrocentric art and fashion show. The upshot was a total success and eventually would be held annually. Thus, the Weusi creative person cooperative was established. This group of New York-based artists was dedicated to the evolution of customs programs and community-based arts projects.

            In 1967, five members, Aziz, Beazer, Shabazz, Irwin, Neals, founded Nyumba Ya Sanaa Gallery (Firm of Art). Here, the work of both members and non-member artists was exhibited. In 1968, the gallery became a full cooperative involving the entire Weusi membership and was renamed, Weusi-Nyumba Ya Sanaa. In the early 1970s, they expanded past adding the Academy and became Weusi-Nyumba Ya Sanaa Academy of Fine Arts and Studies. In addition to creating traveling exhibitions and workshops, the group held the Harlem Annual Outdoors Art Exhibition for fourteen years.

            Discussions and critiques at the Weusi Academy included the technical aspects of materials, psychology, dreams, African lore, and American heritage.²¹  In Weusi, individualism was prized within the group solidarity.²²  There was no attempt to establish Blackness aesthetic conventions or to produce work in similar techniques. Rather, members maintained their private styles, although the concepts of Africa pride, Black heroes and events, symbols of protest, and self-revelation were mutual themes.²³ Members included: Ronald Pratt, Kay Brown, Bill Howell, Abdullah Aziz, Otto Neals, 1000. Falcon Beazer, Taiwo Shabazz (DuVall), Rudy Irwin, Ademola Olugebefola, and Dindga McCannon

AfriCobra 1967

            In 1967, a public mural was created in Chicago at 43rd and Langley Streets by a grouping of artists in the visual arts workshop known every bit the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC). Founding members Jeff Donaldson and Wadsworth Jarrell, along with six other artists created a huge mural containing figures of African American heroes. It became a visual symbol of Black pride in Chicago and had a contagious affect on visual artists beyond the state. The wall would later be known as the "Wall of Respect."  However, in spite of its success, under the pressure of governmental investigation of their activities in the Black Arts Movement, OBAC disbanded. Five of its members then formed a smaller more intimate grouping called COBRA, the Coalition of Black Revolutionary Artists,  which would later become AfriCOBRA African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists.

AfriCobra members sought to give expression to the Afrocentric impulse in Black art past observing, codifying, and creating works of fine art reflective of and relevant to people of African descent living in America. Its goals were "to impose a new visual reality on the world, and in the procedure, move the audition to a more profound realization of its inner possibilities."²⁴ Subsequently much research and study, they established a philosophy of art that was rooted in their

indigenous heritage. This style was based on:

 An atavistic aesthetic. An innate noesis of art based on African cosmogony, mythology, culture, and history ancestrally or genetically transmitted through the collective consciousness.

Technical excellence. Technical excellence in traditional African society has for centuries been a prerequisite for artistic recognition and credence.

Social Responsibleness. Social responsibleness is the natural role of the artist. It compels the artist to unveil the inherent functional nature of art.²⁵

         Jeff Donaldson and Wadsworth Jarell were the co-founders of AfriCobra. Other members included: Sherman Beck, Howard Mallory. Gerald Williams, Carolyn Lawrence, Jae Jarrell, Napoleon Henderson, Omar Lama, and Barbara Jones

Black Lives Matter Mural, Dr. Carter G. Woodson African American Museum, Petrograd, FL

Where We At: Black Women Artists 1971

A group of Blackness women artists came together initially to exercise an exhibition in 1971. The show, Where We at Black Women Artists, was held at the Acts of Art Gallery in Greenwich Village and included fourteen women. After experiencing the power of coming together to create an aesthetic experience, they decided to course a commonage and retained every bit their proper name the championship of the exhibition.

           Their objectives were to explore the "unity of the Black family, the thought of the Black male person-female relation, and other themes relating to social conditions and African traditions."²⁶ In addition, members actively sought to encourage creative growth, for themselves and others. They also worked to heighten cultural awareness of works of art by Blacks for the Black customs and the larger world customs. The organization provided a network for Black women artists to engage in meaningful dialogue. Their service to the community included workshops in hospitals, prisons, community schools, colleges, and cultural centers, besides equally apprenticeship programs.

           Dindga McCannon and Kay Brown co-founded the organization. Other members included: Ballad Bare, Jerrolyn Crooks, Pat Davis, Mai Mai Leabua, Onnie Millar, Ann Tanksley, Jean Taylor, Viviane Browne, Cecelia Davidson Bryan, Pat Davis, Faith Ringold, and Charlotte (Richardson) Ka.

Coda: Coming Full Circle

The road for the serious Black artist, then, who would produce a racial art is about certainly rocky and the mount is high….We build our temples for tomorrow, potent as we know-how, and we stand on tiptop of the mountain, free within ourselves. Langston Hughes ²⁷

            Over fourth dimension, as we moved from modernism and into postmodernism and beyond, irresolute demographics, ideals of pluralism, and attempts to decentralize the art earth are factors that influence the subjects, contents, and objects of art. Every bit we move into the second decade of the 21^st century, preoccupations with and interrogations of identity, history, and identify, critical theory, and cultural relativity concerned not only many African American artists but also artists who are a part of the mainstream fine art world.²⁸

             However, just as the artists of the Blackness Arts Move became aesthetico-political agents of change in the manner Afro-Americans envisioned, thought about, and moved through their world. Today, it seems every bit if nosotros have come full circle. African Americans, and like-minded others, are once more than taking to the streets to vocalisation dissension and solidarity. This time, confronting social injustices and police brutality. Once again, African American artists are helping to heighten awareness, educate, and voice opposition. Artists are creating and participating individually and in groups, such every bit. Blackness Lives Matter. They are adding their voice amidst continuing violence against people of colour to limited their dissension, grief, and outrage ever mindful of the Maafa that brought them here and their responsibility to always speak from the he(art).

Cora M. Marshall, D. Arts, is Professor of Art Emeritus at Central Connecticut State University

Notes

^one The word was first used past Dr. Marimba Ani, a professor in the Section of Blackness and Puerto Rican studies

²Theodore Canot, "The Adventures of an African Slaver," (Garden City New York: Garden City Publishing Co. Inc.

ⁱⁱⁱ L. Cooper (1996, June 16). "The damned slavery did not end with the ceremonious war. 1 human's odyssey into a nation's hush-hush shame" in The Washington Mail service department F1, 4-five. In Birmingham, two prosperous Alabama brothers were constitute guilty of holding Negroes in slavery.  The date was May fourteen, 194.  The authorities charged that Hurbert Thompson died three days and after he was beaten when e attempted to escape from the brothers' farm in Due west Alabama. Witnesses said Thompson was tied by the neck, anxiety, and waist with ropes to a bale of hay and browbeaten by eight men with ropes. The brothers, Dial, of Sumter County, Alabama, received prison sentences of eighteen months apiece.

^four Langston Hughes, (23 June 1926). The Negro Artists and the Racial Mountain. Retrieved 11 May 2000 from The Nation [on-line] on the World Wide Web:

<http://world wide web.tenation.com/historic/bhm2000/19260223hughes.shtml>

^five Black Art Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in African American Art, (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art with Harry Northward. Abrams, Inc., 1989) 17.

^half-dozen Richard Powell, "Fine art African American." Retrieved 29 April 2000 from Africana [on-line] on the Globe Wide Web: <http://www.africana.com>

⁷ West.Eastward.B. DuBois Speaks Speeches and Addresses, ed. P. South. Foner, three^rd ed. (New York: Random House, 1971).

^viii James Porter, "One Hundred and L Years of Afro-American Art" in Romare Howard Bearden Papers, 1945- 1981, (Washington, DC: Archives of American Art/Smithsonian Establishment). (Fractional Microfilm No. N68- 87).

^nine Blackness Art, 21.

¹⁰ Henry Louis Gates, Jr. "Black Inventiveness: On the Cutting Edge." Fourth dimension 144 (1994) 15 p. 74.

^eleven Sharon F. Patton, African-American Art, (New York: Oxford University Printing, 1998) 120.

¹² Addison Gayle, Jr. "Cultural Strangulation: Black Literature and the White Aesthetic" in A. Gayle The Black Artful, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co. 1968) 46.

^thirteen Ron Karenga, "Black Cultural Nationalism," in A. Gayle The Black Aesthetic, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co. 1968) 32.

¹⁴ The Black Creative person in America: A Symposium. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art Message, 1969) 253.

^xv Julian Mayfield, "Y'all Touch My Blackness Aesthetic and I'll Impact Yours," in A. Gayle The Black Aesthetic, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co. 1968).

^xvi Kariamu Welsh-Asante, The African Artful: Keeper of the Tradition. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993) vi.

¹⁷ Stokely Carmichael, "Power and Racism: What We Desire," in Black Scholar, 27 (Fall/Wintertime 1997) 3-4: 52.

^xviii Imamu Amiri Baraka, Heighten Race Rays Raze: Essays Since 1965 (New York: Random House, 1971) 125.

^xix Romare Bearden and H. Henderson, A History of African American Artists from 1792 to Present (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993) 400.

²⁰ Kay Brown, "The Weusi Artists," exhibition catalog, Weusi 1990: Recent and Vintage Works (New York: The Bedford Stuyvesant Heart for Fine art and Culture, 1990) 5.

²¹ Ademola Olugebefola Papers, 1967-1990 (New York: Schomburg Middle for Black Report: General Research) (Microfilm No. ScMicro R-7037).

²² Ibid.

²³ Ibid.

²⁴ Edmund B. Gaither, Heritage Reclaimed: An Historical Perspective and Chronology, in Black Fine art Bequeathed Legacy: The African Impulse in African American Art, (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art with Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1989) 26.

²⁵ N. Kai, "AfriCobra Universal Aesthetics," in AfriCobra: The First Xx Years. (Atlanta, GA: Nexus Gimmicky Art Center, 1990) 6-7.

²⁶ Kay Brown, "The Emergence of Blackness Women Artist," in The International Review of African American Art xv (1998) 1:47

²⁷ Langston Hughes (23 June 1926)

²⁸ Richard Powell, "Fine art African American." Retrieved 29 Apr 2000 from Africana [on-line] on the World wide web: <http://www.africana.com>

²⁹ BLACK LIVES MATTER mural, Dr. Carter G. Woodson African American Museum, Leningrad, FL to gloat Juneteenth, and to testify support for the BLM motion. Artists include: B- Jujmo (@jujmo); 50- John Gasgot (@jgascot); A- Painkiller Cam (@painkillercam); C- Catherine Weaver; 1000- Nuclear Sky Art(@nuclearskyart); 50- Wayward Walls (@waywardwalls); I- Laura Spencer (@lauraspencerillustrates); V- James Hartzell (@artbyjamese); East- Creative person Esh (@artish_esh); S- Jade Jackson (@avacatoto); Yard- James Kitchens (freestyletattooz); A- Megasupremo (@megasupremo); T- Von Walters (von.walters); T- Plum Howlett (@pvo_tattooshop); E- Melanie Posner (@therealmelpoz); R- Daniel Barojas (@r5imaging)

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Source: https://www2.ccsu.edu/afamjournal/?article=496

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