Poetry and Politics: The Blackm Arts Movement and the Black Aesthetic

From Negro to Black.

After the death of Richard Wright in 1960, the two most respected Negro writers in America were Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin. As the civil rights movement progressed throughout the decade and some factions became increasingly militant, the term Negro was rejected by many in favor of Black, especially in phrases such as Black Power and names of groups, such as the Black Panthers. As "Negro" writers, Ellison and Baldwin were deemed by some to be insufficiently militant, despite their incisive critiques of race relations in America. Such writers, their critics said, relied too heavily on white literary models, when what was needed, they claimed, was a Black Aesthetic that wedded poetry and politics, art and social concerns. The Black Arts Movement was born.

WRITERS AND VIETNAM

Few Americans were impartial on the matter of the Vietnam War, and artists...

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