African-American History

If there is a spiritual father of Black Power and a single major influence on BAM literary production, that person is Malcolm X, aka El Hajj Malik El Shabazz.

Time after time, when you read essays, commentaries, autobiographical statements, and literary introductions, not to mention the hundreds of poems written by activists and artists from the sixties, the name and influence of Malcolm X jump off the page at you. Why? Why would a political leader have such a profound literary influence?

In 1973 Dingane Joe Goncalves, the editor of The Journal of Black Poetry wrote:

"If you want to grasp the importance of Malcolm, compare the late writings of Sonia Sanchez or Imamu Baraka with their early, pre-Malcolm works. Bro. Imamu and Sis. Sonia would certainly acknowledge Malcolm's influence. Check out the change of tone and language, the irony and just plain dynamite that developed--and things will become obvious."

"The fact is, Malcolm X had a fantastic impact, like Garvey in his time, on all the Black Arts. Malcolm's influence on Black Poetry in particular is only too obvious - -- yes, and it is just as obvious in all the Black Arts." [Dingane / "A Review of Dynamite Voices, Don L. Lee," pages 89 and 90]

To confirm Dingane's observation about Malcolm's influence on Baraka and Sanchez, note the following: Amiri Baraka has written numerous articles, essays and poems citing Malcolm's influence.

Perhaps the most stellar example of Baraka's hommages to Malcolm is the widely anthologized April 1965 poem, "A Poem For Black Hearts" which was first published in Negro Digest in September of 1965. In addition to her well known poem "Malcolm" which is included in the 1969 anthology For Malcolm X, Sonia Sanchez also wrote an epic poem for multiple youth voices called "Malcolm/Man Don't Live Here No Mo" which was first published in The Journal of Black Poetry (#15, 1971).

Perhaps one of the most cogent statements about Malcolm's influence is contained in the introduction to For Malcolm X, a tribute anthology edited by Dudley Randall and Margaret G. Burroughs:

"John Oliver Killens says in Black Man's Burden that if a Black man walked with his wife in a southern country fair, and some drunken white slapped his wife on the buttocks, he had three choices. He could pretend he didn't see it, he could grin, or he could die. In such situations some Black men have chosen to die, but many more have lived, but not without a diminution of spirit, of soul, of self-respect. What they admire in Malcolm is that he didn't bite his tongue, but spelled out the evil done by the white man and told him to go to hell. There is no Black man, regardless of his agreement or disagreement with Malcolm's politics, goals, or racial theories, whether he's a serf in Mississippi, a cat on the corner in Chicago, or a Black bourgeois in Westchester, who didn't feel a stiffening of his spine and pride in his Blackness when he saw or heard Malcolm take on all comers, and rout them." [Dudley Randall and Margaret Burroughs, pages xxi-xxii]

Larry Neal is quite specific in his citing of Malcolm as an aesthetical as well as political influence.

"What I liked most about Malcolm was his sense of poetry: his speech rhythms, and his cadences that seemed to spring from the universe of Black music. Because I was not reared in the Black church I was something of an anomaly among Northern Blacks. I did not have ready access to the rhetorical strategies of Martin Luther King. My ears were more attuned to the music of urban Black America--that blues idiom music called jazz. Malcolm was like that music. He reminded many of us of the music of Charlie Parker and John Coltrane--a music that was a central force in the emerging ethos of the Black artistic consciousness. Malcolm was in the tough tradition of the urban street speaker. But there was a distinct art in his speeches, an interior logic that was highly compelling and resonant." [Neal / "New Space," page 125]

To fully appreciate Malcolm's impact we must keep in mind several factors. First, there is a natural confluence between BAM's performance orientation and Malcolm's widely admired oratorical skills. Second, during the BAM era Malcolm's speeches were very popular and were widely circulated on records and cassette tapes, thus reinforcing the power of the spoken word. Finally, the impact of Malcolm's best-selling, and still widely available, autobiography, encouraged reading in general and also specifically encouraged an interest in black power-oriented literature. These factors significantly contributed to Malcolm's strong influence on BAM poets and writers, i.e. Black people who use words to communicate.

Whereas some might argue that King was Malcolm's equal as an orator, no one can argue with the fact that Malcolm went far beyond King as a critical anti-establishment voice who offered new visions. Where King proposed civil rights, Malcolm proposed human rights. Where King proposed non-violence, Malcolm proposed self-defense. Where King proposed "integration," Malcolm proposed black power. Malcolm's voice was the embodiment of the black power sentiments both in content as well as in the stylistic flourishes of well-timed phrasing, non-western references (especially Islam and Pan-Africanism), and audacious metaphors designed to appeal to grassroots sensibilities (e.g. "house negro"/"field negro"). Moreover, the majority of Malcolm's speeches were made on behalf of and directly to Black people. He seldom spent time trying to convert Whites. All of this was exactly what a majority of the BAM poets strove to articulate in their black power-oriented poetry.

Larry Neal further defined Malcolm's impact and inspiration: "Then we began to hear Malcolm, the Black voice skating and bebopping like a righteous saxophone solo--mellow truths inspired by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, but shaped out of Malcolm's own style, a style rooted in Black folk memory, and the memory of his Garveyite father. We could dig Malcolm because the essential vectors of his style were more closely related to our own urban experiences. He was the first Black leader, in our generation, to resurrect all of the strains of Black nationalism lurking within us."

"In the precise sense of the word, his stance was radical, rooted in a long strand of flesh-filled nights, and sea deaths, and cotton deaths, and revolutionary deaths; Malcolm was the Opener, the Son of the Word made flesh, and for the first time in our lives, we had a voice to offset the weaknesses and the temptations that we saw around us." [Neal / "New Space / The Growth of Black Consciousness in the Sixties," page 29]

Larry Neal, more presciently than any other writer of his time, perceived the larger picture which connected BAM to Black Power and Black Power to Black history:

"One thing is clear, though. As we move into the seventies, many of the things that concerned us in the early sixties are no longer as important as we once thought they were. We fought for the right to eat a meal in some cracker restaurant in the deep South, but now that that right has been assured by the Federal Government, Black people are no longer interested in such things. Perhaps it was the victory itself that turned us off. Perhaps it was the acute awareness that finally what we wanted was not the cup of coffee in the cracker restaurant, but something more substantive than that. If we could get it, we wanted the land that the restaurant was built on. We wanted reparations. We wanted power. We wanted Nationhood."

"All the major activities that were directed towards the question of liberation and Black Power spring from an ethos, a group spirit. What we have to understand, I think, is that somewhere in the maw of this ethos which continuously manifests itself, are the techniques and means of our liberation. It is not a question of falling into one bag, tenaciously holding on to it as if there were no other. That would be the route to suicide. Rather, what we should be about is a meaningful synthesis of the best that our struggles have taught us. This is a more difficult task than feeling secure in our own particular, and often narrow, endeavors. What we need, above all, is a widening of our perceptions, especially in terms of our own history."

"For example, take the concept of "Black Consciousness." When the thing got really going, Black people in different places developed unique and often contradictory attitudes towards it; they operated out of the principle along a variety of different styles. Some people joined the Muslims. Some people stopped eating certain foods. Other people, just as sincere as the first group, began to relish those very same tabooed foods. Some people put on African clothing. Most wore naturals. Some wore brighter colors. Some raised hell in school. Some left their white wives and husbands. Some joined RAM or the Black Panther Party. Some dug B.B. King, and some dug Coltrane. But s**t. It was all good and on time. It was collective motion/energy that could be harnessed and organized."

"At times one would walk the streets and feel it in the air--Black people asserting that they were each the bearers of an ethos. The beautiful became more beautiful; the Black woman assumed more of her rightful place in the psyche of Black artists; brothers greeted each other warmly. This was especially true after some catastrophic upheaval like Newark or Watts. Black people spoke to each other in strange tongues which they did not understand, but yet spoke well. Harlem, blighted and dope ridden, oozed an atmosphere of love and concrete spirituality. Black consciousness manifested itself collectively and resolutely upon large segments of the Black community." [Neal / "New Space / The Growth of Black Consciousness in the Sixties," pages 9 and 11-12]

Although many BAM participants, as well as most detractors, were unaware of the depth and details of BAM's historic Black Power background, Black Power is nonetheless the foundation of BAM via the influence of Malcolm X, RAM organizers and Karenga. Black Power came to be associated with a militant advocacy of armed self-defense, separation from "racist American domination" and a pride in and assertion of the goodness and beauty of Blackness. In this sense, Black Power was both the content and the style of BAM expressions.

As Larry Neal, perhaps the leading theoretician/critic of the Black Aesthetic, proclaimed in "The Black Arts Movement," his major theoretical essay: "Black Art is the aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power concept. We advocate a cultural revolution in art and ideas. The cultural values inherent in Western history must either be radicalized or destroyed, and we will probably find that even radicalization is impossible." [Neal / "The Black Arts Movement," page 29]

The commercialization and commodification of post-modern literary culture attest to the accuracy of Neal's reservation about the impossibility of radicalizing American culture.

Historical Background of the Black Arts Movement (BAM) - Part I

Historical Background of the Black Arts Movement (BAM) - Part III