Power to the Blacks!

A group of African-Americans doing the Black Power symbol.

    The Black Arts Movement was founded in Harlem by writer and activist, Amiri Baraka. This movement can be seen as the artistic branch of the Black Power Movement. This movement inspired black people everywhere to establish ownership of publishing houses, magazines, journals and art institutions. 
    Many blacks of the time actually encouraged separate communities, and therefore separate arts and music from the whites. This may seem ironic to some because all anyone every heard was that the blacks wanted equal treatment and this just doesn't seem like the way to go about getting it.
    BAM sought “to link, in a highly conscious manner, art and politics in order to assist in the liberation of black people”, and produced an increase in the number and visibility of African-American artistic production. Literature, drama, and music of Blacks “served as an oppositional and defensive mechanism through which creative artists could confirm their identity while articulating their own unique impressions of social reality.”
    Before Blacks could inspire others, they had to first change the way that they viewed themselves. For generations, they had been belittled and told that they were inferior to whites, and now they had to break free of the oppression and become their own people. They had to escape from the white norms and strive to be more natural, a common theme of African-American art and music. 
    By breaking into a area typically reserved for white Americans, artists of the Black Power era expanded opportunities for current African Americans. Today's writers and artists recognize that they owe a large amount of their success to the Black Power's explosion of cultural orthodoxy. 
   

"I think what Black Arts did was inspire a whole lot of Black people to write. Moreover, there would be no multiculturalism movement without Black Arts. Latinos, Asian Americans, and others all say they began writing as a result of the example of the 1960s. Blacks gave the example that you don't have to assimilate. You could do your own thing, get into your own background, your own history, your own tradition and your own culture. I think the challenge is for cultural sovereignty and Black Arts struck a blow for that," said Ishmael Reed, a modern American poet.  

                                                                                                                                                                                                             Sources: 

http://ww2.madonna.edu/NEH/05/tunite.jpg

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/blackarts/historical.htm

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Black+Power+Movement

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/750