THE MAGIC OF JUJU

by Kalamu ya Salaam

            Genesis. This study started out as an article “The Black Arts Movement” for the Oxford Companion to African American Literature. In October of 1995 I was recommended by Dr. Jerry Ward to write the article he had been requested to write but was unable to because of an overload of work. They needed a fast turnaround and I thought, “no problem. I can do that.” I knew I had much of the material on hand and had contacts with relevant people. Once I began the article, I quickly realized there was no book length study of BAM. At first, I found it hard to believe, but then I understood. Why should I expect hunters, trackers, gun-bearers, and porters to write the history of the lion, especially covering a period when the lion was dominant? The realization that the lion’s story had not been told was the beginning of this book. A little over one year later, I had finally finished the first draft of the final manuscript. The manuscript took another year to complete. I consider this completed manuscript just a beginning, an opening roar.

            Basic Thesis. My thesis is simple. BAM is an artistic manifestation of the collective Black Power-oriented political activity that happened in the sixties and seventies. As an artistic movement, BAM is unique in American literary history because BAM is so closely aligned to a political movement. Indeed, as I will point out, seminal leaders of BAM were also important and nationally influential political activists. Additionally, BAM was truly national in scope and not simply a regional phenomenon.

            L/N/L. BAM actually began in far-flung and uncoordinated activities across the country (grassroot/local). Key geographical focal points were:

1. The west coast Bay Area which produced the seminal journals Soulbook, Black Dialogue and The Journal of Black Poetry.
2. Chicago/Detroit which produced Negro Digest/Black World, Third World Press and Black Books Bulletin, as well as OBAC in Chicago; and Broadside Press in Detroit.
3. New York/New Ark (Newark, NJ) which produced BART/S, New Lafayette, and the National Black Theatre in New York, and Spirit House Movers and Jihad Press in New Ark.
4. New Orleans, home base for The Free Southern Theatre which traveled throughout the deep south and influenced the development of BAM activities from Florida to Texas.

            These areas were key because the activities and manifestoes that came from organizations located in these areas set the tone and provided ideological leadership for BAM activities of the second (national) and third (grassroot/local) phases. Thus, first there is uncoordinated and far-flung grassroots activity. Second there is the development of a specific focus as well as a naming which provides diverse grassroot activities a sense of belonging to a larger national movement. Third, there is the often innovative and diverse grassroot activities which represent specific examples of what is now a national movement. This is the L/N/L (local/national/local) model I used to grasp the chronology and to define BAM activities.

            In making my analysis I use the following conceptual framework:

1. Contextualize BAM within the larger social/political environment of its period.
2. Consistent with BAM expressions, emphasize both collective work and individual expression rather than focus solely on individual achievement.
3. Identify by name, date and place the major areas of BAM work.
4. Focus on publications which advocated and documented the Black Arts Movement.

            My perspective is that of both a participant and critic. Since 1968, when I joined the Free Southern Theatre in New Orleans, I have been active as a socially engaged Black writer and BAM proponent. As is documented by my frequent writings in Negro Digest/Black World, as well as by my articles in Black Books Bulletin, The Black Scholar, and my editorship and articles (1970-1983) in The Black Collegian Magazine, I was active as a chronicler and critic of BAM.

            In summary, my primary task is to define and contextualize BAM. My secondary task is to identify the critical organizations, publications and individuals, along with dates and places of activity. My tertiary task is to address misconceptions, myths and unsubstantiated critiques which are often propagated in place of factual information about BAM.

            A Theory of History. Every history is based on a conceptual framework and a specific perspective. This study is no different.

            How does one measure history? What criterion does one use to mark the beginning and the end of a historical period? Do you concentrate on organizations or individuals? How much contextualization is necessary to understand the historical importance of a specific movement? I finished the first and second draft of this study without consciously answering any of the above questions.

            My failure to consciously formulate a historical conception meant that I subconsciously used dominant culture assumptions. Among those assumptions is dating developments by the rise of a “great man.” I had defined BAM’s beginning with LeRoi Jones’ coining of the phrase “Black Arts” and the founding of the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School (BART/S). Although this accurately pinpoints the naming of BAM, this viewpoint is inaccurate and misleading in terms of the development of BAM.

            Who makes a movement? How do you measure the life of a movement? Certainly we can not overlook nor minimize the impact of great leaders, but, on the other hand, neither should we minimize or overlook the existence of grassroot activity. Especially when we speak of resistance and alternative, it is important to understand that a true resistance is not simply a protest. BAM was not trying to be like Euro-centric cultural movements albeit painted Black. BAM had a completely different worldview. BAM did not seek inclusion. BAM’s goal was revolution.

            Most written histories pay little attention to the activities of the masses. The focus is on the titular heads, the great men (and occasionally, a great woman or two). In attempting to get a grip on how BAM started and developed, I kept bumping into this problem of viewpoint. Initially, I ignored the problem and attempted to write the history chronologically. This lead to a focus on the New York scene and spotlighting the Umbra workshop. But as I got deeper into the study and shared my findings with key veterans, a contradiction constantly emerged: Chicago and Detroit had significant activity prior to New York. The first independent journals were published on the West Coast; indeed, Soulbook preceded the founding of BART/S. I had a problem. The solution obviously did not lie in ignoring facts which didn’t fit the thesis but rather in reformulating the thesis to fit the facts.

            BAM’s Decentralized Nature. While, I had a number of assumptions when I started, the final shape of this study has been dictated by the confluence of my research with a focus on the self-defining nature of the Black Arts Movement. Each bit of research leads to more areas of investigation. For example, early on I formulated a hypothesis that BAM was not a New York-based movement as is often supposed. I envisioned a bi-costal development. But the truth is far more complex. The West Coast Bay Area is certainly a major focal point in BAM’s development. But equally important, although much less formally recognized is the activity in the Chicago/Detroit area, particularly Chicago. Indeed, as we will see, one might even argue that BAM-oriented organizations first surface in Chicago even though they did not formally call themselves “Black Arts” institutions.

            Moreover, another area of focus is the militant wing of the Civil Rights Movement, mainly but not exclusively SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) led or inspired cultural activities. Two important cultural products of the Southern Civil Rights thrust were The Free Southern Theatre and The SNCC Freedom Singers, out of which came Bernice Johnson Reagon who went on to found Sweet Honey In The Rock. In a later section, we will look at this development specifically, but I mention this to illustrate that north, south, east and west, BAM had regional focal points which lead to local developments and thereby accounted for an unprecedented diffusion of BAM activities nationwide. Indeed, in many ways, from the very beginning there was a national/local dialectic of activity.

            Initially, BAM was a movement without a self-conscious national focus. Activity such as the 1961 founding of The DuSable Museum by Margaret and Charlie Burroughs in Chicago chronologically is a BAM precursor, even though it is usually thought of as outgrowth of this movement. There are a number of other examples such as the founding of the Afro American Folkloric Troupe in 1962 in the Bay Area, the founding of Soulbook in 1964 also in the Bay Area, and the founding of the Free Southern Theatre in 1964 in Jackson, Mississippi. All are examples of regional or local BAM activity that existed prior to 1965. But the dialectic is not complete if we look solely at pre-1965 regional and local formations.

            While conscious of themselves as local entities, we can not argue that these entities were attempting to lead a national movement. However, as more and more activity developed and as New York came on line, a critical mass was achieved and BAM was born as a coalescing of these various formations into a self-conscious movement for the development and articulation of arts and culture from a Black power perspective on a national basis. Even more than the founding of BART/S, the advent of the “revolutionary journals,” (Soulbook, Black Dialogue, and The Journal of Black Poetry), marks the beginning of an effort to explicitly generate a national movement.

            This is the same course that the civil disobedience phase of the Civil Rights movement had taken earlier in the sixties. The sixties opened with a major grassroots/local event. On February 1, 1960 four students from North Carolina A&T University initiated the first “sit-in.” As Tom Dent notes in his book Southern Journey, the real significance of the sit-in went far beyond a bold, new tactic for Civil Rights struggle.

            These unique protests against segregation, dubbed the “sit-ins” by the media, marked the beginning of a new, activist phase in southern civil rights advocacy. It is important to note that the sit-ins were not initiated by racial leaders, but by college students who were virtually unknown.” 

            Here was grassroots/local activity, initiated by non-leaders, which was explicitly resistance to the status quo. There was no attempt to be “legal” or “non-confrontational.” Moreover, this first sit-in sparked a virtual fire storm of sit-ins and similar activity (including the even more famous “freedom rides”) across the South. The people were on the move and the leadership was forced to scurry to keep up.

            After February 1960 the thrust of the Civil Rights movement switched from legal activity (boycotts, picketing and suits in court) to “illegal” activity such as sit-ins and freedom rides. In the early sixties, sit-ins and freedom rides were explicitly against the law. In this case “the law” consisted not simply of literal legislation in effect at the time in the various communities in question, but “the law” was also long standing traditions at both the state and national level. In a similar way, BAM consciously resisted literary laws then in effect.

            After the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights legislation and the 1965 Voting Rights legislation, the goal was no longer the desegregation of public accommodations and access to government, but rather the focus shifted to the more radical demand of Black self-determination and empowerment, i.e. Black Power. In a similar way, BAM radically sought to establish an alternative literature that validated Black folk traditions and challenged White literary traditions as the ultimate judge of literary value for Black literature. In ways both obvious and subtle, both positive and negative, BAM can be considered Black Power in the literary and performance arts sphere.

            Performance Orientation / “Publication” Focus. There is one final conceptual wrinkle which needs to be explained before we delve into the formal investigation of BAM. The majority of BAM activities were performance oriented, yet I have chosen to focus mainly on publications. Why?

            One reason for my emphasis on publication is because of the research orientation of this study. Not surprisingly, the majority of the documentation that is available is publication material. Relatively speaking there is very little recording and audio/visual documentation of BAM performances in general circulation. Even then-popular television programs such as Ellis Hazlip’s Soul and the Bill Greaves’ produced Black Journal series of programs are not generally available. Moreover, when these programs were popular, although viewed nationally, they were not the primary sources for disseminating BAM information. Which brings us to the second reason I focus on publications.

            BAM publications were the main ways in which BAM information was circulated. Negro Digest/Black World was the most widely circulated and referred to BAM-oriented publication, but the West Coast trio of Soulbook, Black Dialogue, and especially The Journal of Black Poetry were also critically important. Two other publications were extremely effective: the anthology Black Fire and the special 1968 Black Theatre Issue of TDR. Especially for the burgeoning numbers of community and campus-based Black Theatres of the BAM era, those two publications contained playscripts which were performed in hundreds of communities.

            Grassroots theatre companies used a mixture of the plays contained in BAM publications, locally created productions (which invariably included dramatized poetry readings), and major productions by playwrights such as James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, Ron Milner, Sonia Sanchez, Ted Ward, and above all, the prolific Ed Bullins whose slice of life, “ghetto-based” dramas were very popular. Because each community had their own poets, the influence of BAM publications, although considerable for shaping the overall direction of BAM poetry, was less impactful in poetry than in formal theatre.

            In the chapter on theatre I will focus on the performance objectives of the Afro American Folkloric Troupe as an example of BAM theatre in the precursor, or first grassroots, period. The national impact of that group was far less than merited by the work of the Troupe precisely because the Troupe was not broadly publicized in BAM publications.

            An additional reason for focusing on publication rather than performance is that performance has the inherent limitation of not transferring well in print. Print language can not communicate rhythms, timbre, tone, inflection in language, nor body language, dance and visual elements, all of which were greatly used in BAM performances. Resultantly, if you were not in the audience, you do not have an adequate reference for appreciating what is only suggested by text.

            Text alone does not convey the power of BAM poetry and plays. Which means on the one hand that we have very little documentable evidence to use to study BAM performances and, on the other hand, the printed evidence we do have is admittedly limited and limiting. Nonetheless, what quickly became apparent around the country is that, in drama, it was better to have the script and to “interpret” the script in your own way than not to have the script at all.

            This is why and how I approached this study. Throughout this study, the conceptual triad of L/N/L will dictate that I pay attention to what was going on in key areas prior to 1965. As much as possible I have attempted to list the names of founding members and the dates of founding. Finally, I will emphasize elements which are documented by primary sources (mainly books and journals) generally available.

            I believe this methodology increases the value of this book both as a guide for further study and as a reliable reference for a general overview. Certainly the “selection” of facts and figures and the interpretation of what has been selected is my choice, but by being upfront about the criteria for selection and by specifying my sources, I aim to make a clear case for the relative accuracy of this study. Additionally, much of the interpretation I offer has been comparatively tested against the views of numerous BAM participants and veterans. While some may argue with my opinions and take issue with the specifics of my methodology, the general historical information is accurate. Moreover, through on-going discussion and interviews with BAM veterans, I have been able to draw out information that previously has either not been published or has not been contextualized as elements of BAM. This study is meant to be a beginning not only in terms of the first published book length study, but also in terms of establishing an analytical framework for the ongoing study of BAM.