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(see Theme IV: PROTEST), black power demands that African Americans free themselves from the white "dictatorship of definition, interpretation, and consciousness" and claim the right to define themselves in their own terms. In his essay "The Black Arts Movement" critic, poet, and playwright Larry Neal (1937-1981) applies the principles of self-determination espoused by Carmichael and others to the arts and concludes that blacks must reject Western cultural values.
Born in Atlanta, Neal grew up in Philadelphia. After graduating from the predominantly black Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1961 and taking an M.A. at the University of Pennsylvania in 1963, he moved to Harlem. There he met influential black writers and intellectuals and took the lead in promoting art that spoke exclusively to and for African Americans. In 1964, with Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), he founded the Black Arts Repertory Company, and in 1968, again collaborating with Baraka, he edited Black Fire, an anthology of essays, poems, and plays by young black writers. In that same year he published "The Black Arts Movement." The rhetoric of the essay bristles with the passions of 1968, a year that included the disillusioning Tet offensive in Vietnam, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy, widespread urban rioting, and the Democratic national convention with its bloody violence. Most of "The Black Arts Movement" deals with the political role of black theater, but in its first section, excerpted here, Neal addresses broader cultural issues. The essay seeks to provoke a change of consciousness around the concept of blackness and the nature of being black. Its vision of black art defines community in separatist terms. Joining the advocates of black power, Neal calls for a nation within a nation grounded in a distinctive African American culture.
Born in Atlanta, Neal grew up in Philadelphia. After graduating from the predominantly black Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1961 and taking an M.A. at the University of Pennsylvania in 1963, he moved to Harlem. There he met influential black writers and intellectuals and took the lead in promoting art that spoke exclusively to and for African Americans. In 1964, with Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), he founded the Black Arts Repertory Company, and in 1968, again collaborating with Baraka, he edited Black Fire, an anthology of essays, poems, and plays by young black writers. In that same year he published "The Black Arts Movement." The rhetoric of the essay bristles with the passions of 1968, a year that included the disillusioning Tet offensive in Vietnam, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy, widespread urban rioting, and the Democratic national convention with its bloody violence. Most of "The Black Arts Movement" deals with the political role of black theater, but in its first section, excerpted here, Neal addresses broader cultural issues. The essay seeks to provoke a change of consciousness around the concept of blackness and the nature of being black. Its vision of black art defines community in separatist terms. Joining the advocates of black power, Neal calls for a nation within a nation grounded in a distinctive African American culture.