MILILTANCY, BLACK ART & AESTHETIC AFROCENTRISM

CIVIL/HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT

• 1955-1968
• Writers inspired by the concept of revolution
• Themes of rage, redefinition and war
• Mocked white power
• Urged Blacks to fight any system, religious/political

Time magazine describes the Black Arts Movement as the "single most controversial moment in the history of African-American literature – possibly in American literature as a whole."

BAM MOVEMENT WRITERS

• Amiri Baraka
• Sonia Sanchez
• Haki Madhubuti

"Poems are bullshit unless they are
teeth or trees or lemons piled...
We want"poems that kill."
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot guns.
Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons."

-Amiri Baraka

AMARI BARAKA

• 1934-2014
• Born Leroi Jones
• Poetry, Drama, Fiction, Essays and Music
• Founder of BAM
• Educator

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Ka'Ba

"A closed window looks down
on a dirty courtyard, and Black people
call across or scream across or walk across
defying physics in the stream of their will.

Our world is full of sound
Our world is more lovely than anyone's
tho we suffer, and kill each other…

SONIA SANCHEZ

SANCHEZ

• 1934-
• Born Wilsona Driver
• Graduated from Hunter College
• Became political activist (BAM)
• Political poet

BLACK PANTHERS

• Stokely Carmichael

BARAKA

• Black cultural nationalist
• Baraka saw poetry as a weapon of action
• Poetry demanded violence against those he felt were responsible for an unjust society.

MODERN AFROCENTRIC POETS

LASANE PARISH CROOKS

2 PAC

TUPAC SHAKUR

• 1971-1996
• Born Lasane Crooks
• Parents were members of the Black Panthers
• Rapper/Poet
• Book "The Rose That Grew From Concrete"

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