Africans and their descendants have been a part of the story of the Americas at least since 1619. They were transported to these shores by Europeans in specially constructed ships with platforms beneath the deck designed to maximize the number of enslaved Africans they could haul. Fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters were confined for up to three months, shackled in irons while crossing the Atlantic Ocean. The filthy conditions and poor diet made it inevitable that there would be a high mortality rate. By the time they reached their destination, nearly half were dead. The route is sometimes referred to as the Middle Passage, although increasingly it is being called the Maafa––Kiswahili meaning “great disaster or unimaginable horror.”¹

              I returned on board to aid in stowing one 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 breath in a hole but twenty-two inches high. Theodore Canot² 

               Slavery was sanctioned by law until the Emancipation proclamation of 1863 but continued in practice for many years. One of the last slavery convictions in the United States was obtained on May 14, 1954.³ So, it is no wonder then, to counter this unremitting erosion of Black 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 place. Negroes fought not only to break the chains that bound them but also for their civil liberties and the freedom to fully participate in and contribute to American society. Eventually, as 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 Art

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

              Africans brought to this country did not come 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 world.⁵ Nonetheless, while the enslaved Africans had this predisposed aesthetic, the content of their art was invariably changed as the result of their American slave experience. Thus, the aesthetic 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 knowledge 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, canvas, and modeling tools, to fully engage in Western artistic traditions. Nonetheless, Negroes adapted their skills to fit their time and place. During the Colonial, Federalist, and Antebellum years drums, jewelry, wrought-iron figures, ceramic face vessels, and domestic architecture have been found in former enslaved Negro communities. After the Civil War ended, Negroes began to assimilate into the larger population of American society, which was still inventing itself. Nonetheless, by the 1860s and 1870s, small numbers of Negro artists were receiving academic training in the use of Western artistic traditions. Neo-classical sculptor, Edmonia Lewis, and Hudson River landscape painter Robert S. Duncanson, along with moody, Barbizon School-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 pressure of having to represent their race, so overwhelming they chose to move abroad to places such as Paris.  Meanwhile, Negro folk artists were creating inventive textile art, especially cloth appliqués and quilts.⁶ By the beginning of the twentieth century, some Negroes were considered skilled artists of merit by the Western mainstream art world.

              Later, after drought and the boll weevil decimated the cotton crop in the South, nearly two million Negroes moved northward. This journey would come to be known as The Great Migration (1915 – 1920). No longer isolated in the "Jim Crow" South, large populations of Negroes moved into major urban communities. Eventually, as advancements were made in education and employment, a Negro middle-class developed. The new Black 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 world. What is more, as they found their voice and an audience 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 frequently 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, W. 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 being a Negro at the beginning 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 after generation without respect for self. Dr. DuBois is thought by many to be the “Father” of Pan-Africanism. He believed in the idea that one African soul unites Negroes across Africa with each other and with Negroes in the Americas as well.⁷ He was not alone in his conviction. 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 creative 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 movement that took hold and flowered in New York’s Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s. Negro artists must not only participate and collaborate with the mainstream art world, according to Locke, but they also need to reclaim their African legacy and draw inspiration from African art by incorporating aesthetico-racial African elements into their work.⁸ The institution of slavery broke the connections to these aesthetic traditions and Afro-Americans who did not reconnect by preserving, enhancing, and promoting their own rich heritage alienated “themselves from the uniquely creative possibilities of their natural racial heritage.”⁹ Locke was evangelical in advocating for this position. He led by example and not only wrote about the importance of preserving an African connection but 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 among artists of the Harlem Renaissance that spread across America.

               The philosophy of the movement combines realism, ethnic consciousness, and Americanism. The artists were united in their sense of participating in a common endeavor and their commitment to giving aesthetic expression to the Negro experience. Sculptor Richard Barthé's, Supplication, is one example. Modeled after Michelangelo’s Pieta, he depicts a Negro mother holding the body 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 example, Allan Rohan Crite’s School’s Out (1936); and the desire for socio-political equality which can be seen Sargent Johnson’s Forever Free (1933). This first period of intense creative activity was, however, heavily dependent upon White patronage. Therefore, after the stock market crash of 1929, it never regained its footing.¹⁰ Nonetheless, 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 issues, which tended to be representational, and assimilation into the White mainstream art world that emphasizes abstraction. For example, Hale Woodruff integrated African motifs into his paintings, while abstract painters, such as Norman Lewis, focused on the vigor and conflict underlying abstract forms. Meanwhile, numerous Negro artists were participating in the Federal Arts Projects of the Works Progress Administration, one 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 part of their present. Historian Nathan Huggins thought that Douglas's endeavor to "interpret what he understood to be the spiritual identity of the Negro people was a kind of soul of self that united all that the Black man was in Africa and the New World."¹¹ As a result of their work in the WPA, several artists gained national prominence. One of the most famous in this group is, perhaps, painter Jacob Lawrence. His series on subjects such as John Brown, the Haitian revolution, Harlem, and the Great Migration spoke, in an emotive way, 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 connected the aesthetic concerns of the past to those of the future. They did so by not only supporting the vision of the younger generation of Black artists, but also by creating works themselves that highlighted their shared interest in African aesthetic sensibilities, the Black figure, and the continuing struggle for civil liberties.

Black is Beautiful and the Notion of a Black Aesthetic

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

               After hundreds of years of being told that their hair is not straight enough, their lips are not thin enough, their skin is not light enough, Black Americans became agents of their own identity. By the 1960s, frustration with the lack of civil rights progress and outrage over discrimination caused a paradigm 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 way they wore their Afro hair, their style of African and militant dress, and most importantly, the content and passion of their art. Large numbers of Afro-American artists actively participated in the fight for power and liberty but did so in varying ways.  Some chose to take direct action by supporting and taking part in political actions as 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 change 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 best serve the needs of the community and advance the cause. As more and more work was produced and exhibited, however, attention was drawn not only to the content but also the quality of the work. As the demand for "Black art" increased, the mainstream art world, along with segments of the Black artistic community, raised several significant questions. What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for a work of art to be Black? Is there, or should there be a different standard to judge the "quality" of the work that is labeled "Black"? Does a Black aesthetic exist?

             Activists, Ron Karenga, believed that “Black artists and those who wish to be artists must accept the fact that what is needed is an aesthetic, a Black aesthetic that is criteria for judging the validity and/or the beauty of a work of art.”¹³ Artist Hale Woodruff, as well as others, argues that there is artwork produced by Black artists but there are no specific characteristics that can apply to all works by Blacks.¹⁴ Julian Mayfield, on the other hand, proclaims that the Black Aesthetic is, “in our racial memory, and the unshakable knowledge of who we are, where we have 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 time, geography and boundaries, and the evidence itself in both surface and deep structure".¹⁶

              The problem of defining a Black aesthetic is due, in part, to the fact that there are as many forms of creative expression as there are Black artists. For that reason, it is impossible to subsume the whole into one part. Nonetheless, there was a type of art produced by Afro- American artists that came from a strong nationalistic base; is characterized by the artist's aesthetico-political preoccupation; and uses past and present heroes and events to teach, to inspire, to imbue with pride, and to give hope; and is centered in African heritage, once again. It is this category of work that many consider "Black art".

             The second surge of fervent creativity in African American art took place during this politically charged Black Power movement. It developed, out of a need to reconnect to the past, to validate the present, and to shape the future. 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 like when Afro-Americans became Black with a capital “B”.

 Say it loud. I'm Black and I'm proud!

 One of the tragedies of the struggle against racism is that...there has been only a civil rights movement whose tone of voice was adapted to an audience of liberal whites. It served as a sort of buffer zone between them and angry young Blacks. None of its so-called 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 angry; when they saw four little Black girls bombed to death, they were angrier, and when nothing happened, they were steaming. We had nothing to offer that they could see, except to go out and be beaten again. Stokely Carmichael¹⁷

              The mid-1960s and early 1970s were a time of cultural and political upheaval for many people of color in America. It was the time of the Black revolution. It was the time for the Black ethnocentrism of Malcolm-X. It was a time ready for the socio-political strength of the Black Panther Party. It was the time for visual representations of the movement created by the Black Arts Movement. In other words, it was time for changes. First in naming. Negro became Afro- American, which then became Black. African derivatives replaced slave surnames. It was a time of red, black, and green and Black Nationalism. It was a time of altered self-consciousness, signified by altered 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 want something more substantive than a meal in a southern diner. They want reparation (affirmative action) and reclamation (African legacy and aesthetics).

Background: What Happened When

               With the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, came shifts in events that prompted change–– sometimes with a gentle stir, other times in a violent uproar. Therefore, to put the aesthetic content into context (all art is culturally bound in time and place), a brief chronology is important.

• In 1963, President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas and that same year over 200,000 people march to the nation's capital 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, form the Spiral Group, dedicated to defining the problems faced by Black artists and to linking art with social responsibility.
• The following year, 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. receives the Nobel Peace Prize and the Civil 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 aesthetic preoccupations to include Africa and socio-political content came to be known as the artists of the Black Arts Movement. 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. As a result, over 30 people were killed. The United States’ involvement in Vietnam escalates and poor, mostly Black youths (the average 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, two Black college students, Huey Newton and Bobby Seal, organized the Black Panther Party.
• The use of the term, "Black Power," starts in 1966 during a protest march through Mississippi begun by James Meredith, the first Black to attend the University of Mississippi. Meredith was wounded by a sniper during the march and is hospitalized. Carmichael shouts: "What do you want?" the crowd responds, "Black power." This demand acts as a counter to the speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. and other Southern Christian Leadership Committee (SCLC) leaders. The Black Power movement breaks away from the passive turn-the-cheek approach and takes on a more aggressive posture. Later 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 first Black US Supreme Court Justice. Several members who would later form the organization AfriCobra painted the "Wall of Respect" in
• The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee initiates riots that roared across the country from Washington, DC to
• July 20, 1969, man first 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” show and later forms a group by 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 power––led to the often radical, sometimes rational development of the Black Power movement. Likewise, during this time, 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 Black Art re-emerged in America around 1964. It was the Nationalist consciousness reawakened in Black people. The sense of identity, and with that opening, a real sense of purpose and direction. The sense of who and what we were and what we had to do. Imamu Amiri Baraka¹⁸  

             The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s was a non-violent integrated assemblage of people whose strategies included: freedom rides, boycotts, sit-ins, marches, and voter registration drives. During that time, progress was made. Nonetheless, by the mid-1960s, there is a spreading feeling among the Black youths that they had waited long enough to be equal and free that it is time to stop begging and start demanding. Then, with the clenched fist raised high, the call for "Black Power" resounds across the land.

                Afro-Americans leaped over the ideological firewall constructed to prevent full membership as equals in American society by using various ways to bring about change. Some Blacks believed that they should improve their own communities rather than striving for complete integration. They also felt that it was acceptable to retaliate against violent assaults. The leader of this point of view was Malcolm X, a Black Muslim. Others emphasized the African heritage of Blacks and sought to promote a positive Black identity through education in Black history and culture. 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 Black Arts Movement attempted to produce art that sprung from the community's needs, concerns, and hopes. They were depicters of the Black experience and keepers of the African cultural influence. Coming from this strong nationalistic foundation, some artists set up small communities that challenged the hegemony of the art world and the Western notion of 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 against 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 drawn together, in many cases, by their need to participate in the struggle for civil liberation and justice. Thus, several arts organizations sprung up that provided a forum to instigate socio-political change and to engage in dialogues concerning important racial issues of the time. Among the Black art groups were Spiral, Weusi, AfriCobra, and Where We at Black Women Artists.

 Spiral 1963 – 1965

               On July 5, 1993, several artists met at the studio of Romare Bearden to discuss the role 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 upward as it moves from the center 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 old, 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 society. These artists banned together to exchange 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 issue of artistic freedom versus social responsibility; and they searched for points of intersection that would allow them to work as a group.  In 1964, they agreed to have an exhibition of work in black and white as a symbol of the struggle for civil liberties. Although Bearden suggested that the unifying element of the show could be black and white collages, only two members thought this was a meaningful idea.  The exhibition was a success, but afterward, attendance began to wane, as their differences became a divide rather than an inspiration.  By the fall of 1965, the meetings ended.

Weusi, 1965 - 1990

          Weusi, which means "blackness" in Swahili, not only names an organization of artists but also describes its central focus. Their purpose was to preserve, develop, and promote African American culture through the visual arts. The progenitor of the group was an alliance of over 50 artists, The Twentieth Century Creators. The Twentieth Century Creators called for unity and positive ethnic direction in the arts and promoted “Black art for Black people.” Through the leadership of James Sneed, Milika Rahman, and others, this movement led to the establishment of the “Annual Harlem Outdoor Art Festival” in 1964.²⁰   Looking for an alternative community event to displace 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 event was a total success and eventually would be held annually. Thus, the Weusi artist cooperative was established. This group of New York-based artists was dedicated to the development of community programs and community-based arts projects.

            In 1967, five members, Aziz, Beazer, Shabazz, Irwin, Neals, founded Nyumba Ya Sanaa Gallery (House 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 by 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 Black aesthetic conventions or to produce work in similar techniques. Rather, members maintained their individual styles, although the concepts of Africa pride, Black heroes and events, symbols of protest, and self-revelation were common themes.²³ Members included: Ronald Pratt, Kay Brown, Bill Howell, Abdullah Aziz, Otto Neals, G. 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 group of artists in the visual arts workshop known as 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 impact on visual artists across the country. The wall would later be known as the "Wall of Respect."  Nonetheless, 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 group 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 by observing, codifying, and creating works of 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 process, move the audience to a more profound realization of its inner possibilities."²⁴ After much research and study, they established a philosophy of art that was rooted in their

ethnic heritage. This style was based on:

 An atavistic aesthetic. An innate knowledge 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 acceptance.

Social Responsibility. Social responsibility 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

Where We At: Black Women Artists 1971

             A group of Black women artists came together initially to do 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 form a collective and retained as their name the title of the exhibition. 

           Their objectives were to explore the “unity of the Black family, the idea of the Black male-female relation, and other themes relating to social conditions and African traditions.”²⁶ In addition, members actively sought to encourage artistic growth, for themselves and others. They also worked to heighten cultural awareness of works of art by Blacks for the Black community and the larger world community. 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, as well as apprenticeship programs. 

           Dindga McCannon and Kay Brown co-founded the organization. Other members included: Carol Blank, 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 most certainly rocky and the mountain is high….We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know-how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves. Langston Hughes²⁷  

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

             However, just as the artists of the Black Arts Movement became aesthetico-political agents of change in the way Afro-Americans envisioned, thought about, and moved through their world. Today, it seems as if we have come full circle. African Americans, and like-minded others, are once more taking to the streets to voice dissension and solidarity. This time, against 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 as. Black Lives Matter. They are adding their voice amid continuing violence against people of color to express 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

¹ The word was first used by Dr. Marimba Ani, a professor in the Department of Black and Puerto Rican studies

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

³ L. Cooper (1996, June 16). "The damned slavery did not end with the civil war. One man's odyssey into a nation's secret shame" in The Washington Post section F1, 4-5. In Birmingham, two prosperous Alabama brothers were found guilty of holding Negroes in slavery.  The date was May 14, 194.  The government charged that Hurbert Thompson died three days and after he was beaten when e attempted to escape from the brothers' farm in West Alabama. Witnesses said Thompson was tied by the neck, feet, and waist with ropes to a bale of hay and beaten by eight men with ropes. The brothers, Dial, of Sumter County, Alabama, received prison sentences of eighteen months apiece.

⁴ 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://www.tenation.com/historic/bhm2000/19260223hughes.shtml>

⁵ Black Art Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in African American Art, (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art with Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1989) 17.

⁶ Richard Powell, “Art African American.” Retrieved 29 April 2000 from Africana [on-line] on the World Wide Web: <http://www.africana.com>

⁷ W.E.B. DuBois Speaks Speeches and Addresses, ed. P. S. Foner, 3^rd ed. (New York: Random House, 1971).

⁸ James Porter, “One Hundred and Fifty Years of Afro-American Art” in Romare Howard Bearden Papers, 1945- 1981, (Washington, DC: Archives of American Art/Smithsonian Institution). (Partial Microfilm No. N68- 87).

⁹ Black Art, 21.

¹⁰ Henry Louis Gates, Jr. “Black Creativity: On the Cutting Edge.” Time 144 (1994) 15 p. 74.

¹¹ Sharon F. Patton, African-American Art, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) 120.

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

¹³ Ron Karenga, “Black Cultural Nationalism,” in A. Gayle The Black Aesthetic, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co. 1968) 32.

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

¹⁵ Julian Mayfield, “You Touch My Black Aesthetic and I’ll Touch Yours,” in A. Gayle The Black Aesthetic, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co. 1968).

¹⁶ Kariamu Welsh-Asante, The African Aesthetic: Keeper of the Tradition. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993) 6.

¹⁷ Stokely Carmichael, “Power and Racism: What We Want,” in Black Scholar, 27 (Fall/Winter 1997) 3-4: 52.

¹⁸ Imamu Amiri Baraka, Raise Race Rays Raze: Essays Since 1965 (New York: Random House, 1971) 125.

¹⁹ 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 Center for Art and Culture, 1990) 5.

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

²² Ibid.

²³ Ibid.

²⁴ Edmund B. Gaither, Heritage Reclaimed: An Historical Perspective and Chronology, in Black Art Ancestral 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 Twenty Years. (Atlanta, GA: Nexus Contemporary Art Center, 1990) 6-7.

²⁶ Kay Brown, “The Emergence of Black Women Artist,” in The International Review of African American Art 15 (1998) 1:47

²⁷ Langston Hughes (23 June 1926)

²⁸ Richard Powell, “Art African American.” Retrieved 29 April 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, St. Petersburg, FL to celebrate Juneteenth, and to show support for the BLM movement. Artists include: B- Jujmo (@jujmo); L- John Gasgot (@jgascot); A- Painkiller Cam (@painkillercam); C- Catherine Weaver; K- Nuclear Sky Art(@nuclearskyart); L- Wayward Walls (@waywardwalls); I- Laura Spencer (@lauraspencerillustrates); V- James Hartzell (@artbyjamese); E- Artist Esh (@artish_esh); S- Jade Jackson (@avacatoto); M- James Kitchens (freestyletattooz); A- Megasupremo (@megasupremo); T- Von Walters (von.walters); T- Plum Howlett (@pvo_tattooshop); E- Melanie Posner (@therealmelpoz); R- Daniel Barojas (@r5imaging)