Black Arts Movement
by Kalamu ya Salaam Chapter 2: BAM’s Historical Background
Taken from: “The Magic of Juju: An Appreciation of the Black Arts Movement (BAM)” 
BAM begins in 1965, catalyzed into action by the assassination of Malcolm X in February 1965, which propelled a number of forces to make definitive moves and declarations. As we will see, LeRoi Jones joined forces with other Black activists/artists to found the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School (BART/S) in March of 1965. Also, the staff of Black Dialogue decided to dedicate their 1965 debut issue to Malcolm. Additionally, with the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Bill, the Civil Rights Movement was effectively ended and the stage was set for “Black Power” which “officially” begins as a social movement in 1966 but which, like BAM, had already been set in motion at the grassroots level prior to achieving national recognition.
BAM was the first American literary movement with a national reach to advance “social engagement” as an essential element of its mission. The “revolutionary” literature of the depression era 30s such as the communist-led John Reed clubs which promoted the work of Richard Wright and other Black writers of that period, did not have the national reach that BAM had. The focal points for the production of most of that Marxist-oriented work was Chicago and the Northeast corridor (particularly the New York area.) BAM on the other hand was produced in the far west and in the deep south as well as in the Northern urban areas.
The key ideological figures of BAM were Larry Neal,writer Rolland Snellings (Askia Muhammad Toure), poet, journalist and activist and Maulana Karenga,activist/scholar who, in the early sixties, was head of the Los Angeles chapter of Attorney Donald Warden’s Afro-American Association. Of course, the spiritual father of Black Power was Malcolm X, who inspired both Neal and Karenga.
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.
Neal, Larry. “The Black Arts Movement” in Black Theatre/The Drama Review (Volume 12, Number 4 [T40] Summer 1968) Ed Bullins, guest editor. New York: School of the Arts, New York University, 1968