Freedom Facts and Firsts. Jessie Carney Smith
Angelou (AP Photo/Doug Mills).
Lean’tin L. Bracks
Attaway, William Alexander (1911–1986)
William Alexander Attaway was born November 19, 1911, in Greenville, Mississippi, and died June 17, 1986, in Los Angeles, California. He was one of the first African Americans to write about the Great Migration and the impact of the new economic environment and industrialization on rural life and the spirit of minorities and the poor in America. His novels are peopled with the marginalized, not only African Americans but also Mexican Americans and migrant whites. Attaway’s novels about these groups include Let Me Breathe Thunder (1939) and Blood on the Forge (1941). His treatment of the disenfranchised and the racial climate in which they lived has been likened in some ways to the works of Richard Wright, with whom he became acquainted when they worked together on the Federal Writers Project during the Great Depression. Like many other African American writers, he found that polemical writings about the disenfranchised were not well received; following the publication of the novels and one short story, he therefore turned his attention to other genres. His second novel, Blood on the Forge, is his best known and most discussed work; it explores the causes and results of migration. It follows three African American half-brothers who flee a lynch mob in 1919 in Kentucky for the safety and security of the North, the Promised Land, only to find there are numerous forms of lynching and that the North has its own pitfalls. The brothers become trapped by the steel mills and racial tensions of Pennsylvania. Attaway participated in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March and continued his involvement in the fight for civil rights in his writing, emphasizing the black experience in works for television, radio, and motion pictures.
Baldwin was ever mindful of the need for the unity of humankind.
Helen R. Houston
Baldwin, James (1924–1987)
James Arthur Baldwin was born in August 2, 1924, in New York City and died December 1987, in southern France. He was concerned with destroying the fantasies and delusions of a contented white America intent on avoiding reality. As a result of his candor, his writing is prophetic and prefigures the Civil Rights Movement. His works, especially the nonfiction The Fire Next Time (1963), emphasize the urgency of the civil rights initiative and the need for love. He rejects Christianity for the way it is practiced, but retains the belief that we must learn to live together in love. Baldwin was out of the country when the actual Civil Rights Movement began. His commitment to the struggle is seen in his writings and speeches in which he talks about race relations and his participation in social protest. He returned to America and participated in marches, met with black leaders, and even took part in a meeting with the U.S. attorney general. He visited the South in an attempt to understand the struggle, only to find the situation there mirrored by conditions in the North; the disenfranchisement of the populace in other parts of the world added to his certainty about his message. Baldwin was ever mindful of the need for the unity of humankind. He called for the oppressed and their oppressors to recognize the humanity in each other. Even though he seemed to despair in his early writings, and he was impatient with the slowness of change in society, in his works he continued to hold out hope for transformation in the world.
Helen R. Houston
Amiri Baraka was born LeRoi Jones in 1934 (AP Photo).
Baraka, Amiri (1934–)
Born Everett LeRoi Jones in October 7, 1934, in Newark, New Jersey, Amiri Baraka produced an oeuvre of diverse writings. He started as an integrationist, but has changed his black political and artistic thought reflecting society. Following a trip to China and a visit to Cuba, he became aware of the need for political involvement and active participation by artists in bringing about change. This ideological change is evident in his play Dutchman (1964) and his collection of social essays Home (1966), and it becomes even more apparent in his nationalist stance. He changed his name to Imamu Amiri Baraka (later dropping Imamu) and co-edited Black Fire (1968). Both his name and this work define his political vision and reflect the rejection of the integrationist thrust; he thereafter espoused a black nationalist political stance by young black writers and thinkers. With the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X, he and others moved further toward a black consciousness that manifested itself in the Black Arts Movement. It calls for an art by, for, and about the black populace. He spoke as a black nationalist concerned with and addressing the political, social, and cultural needs of black people. His actions and speeches have made him a controversial figure. As a political activist in Newark and on the national scene, he served as chair of the Committee for a Unified Newark (1968–1975) and of the National Black Political Convention (1972). In 2003, the New Jersey General Assembly voted to eliminate the post of State Poet he held because of his poem on the 2001 World Trade Center attack.
Helen R. Houston
Bell, James Madison (1826–1902)
James Madison Bell was born April 3, 1826, in Gallipolis, Ohio, and died in 1902 in Toledo, Ohio. An active member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, he is known as the “Poet of Hope” and the “Bard of Maumee.” Bell’s poetry, like much of the poetry of his day, was better recited than read and was often occasional. The poetry espoused human as well as his own political values. In fact, his poetry was a political tool to speak about the issues of the day (slavery, civil rights, and emancipation) from a black man’s point of view. Consequently, his poetic concerns were more didactic and political than artistic. His themes were liberty, freedom, and hope. On November 9, 1847, he moved to Chatham, Ontario, Canada, and became active in the anti-slavery movement. Here he met and became friends with John Brown. He helped secure funds and support for Brown’s 1859 Harpers Ferry Raid and was one of the signers of Brown’s “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States.” In 1860, he moved to California, where he was a member of the Fourth California Colored Convention, which fought for suffrage rights. Later, he moved to Toledo and focused on the rights and education of newly freed slaves. He was a representative to the State Republican Convention and a delegate-at-large from Ohio to the 1868 and 1872 Republican National Conventions. He commemorated the Fifteenth Amendment with his ode “The Triumph of Liberty.”
James Madison Bell (Fisk University).
Helen R. Houston
Brooks, Gwendolyn Elizabeth (1917–2000)
Gwendolyn Brooks was born June 7, 1917, in Topeka, Kansas, and died December 3, 2000, in Chicago. Her writing can be divided into two parts: her early writings and her later work, which focused more on the social responsibility of both the artist and the artist’s audience. Her early writing was recognized and praised by the establishment. It presented the plight of black America in an acceptable form and language. She won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry during her early career. In 1968 she was named the Poet Laureate of Illinois. She published The Bean Eaters in 1960, which was a more overtly polemical work than her earlier works and one that seemed to anticipate a brewing artistic rebellion.
The 1960s brought a parallel of the Black Power Movement with the Black Arts Movement. There was a call for black art to be written by black artists, about black people, and for a black audience; words were to be weapons and the language was to be accessible. In 1968 Brooks attended the Second Fisk University Writers’ Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, where she heard one of the founders of the Black Arts Movement, LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) speak; black poetry was redefined here, and the role of the black artist was discussed. This experience