Black Power and Black Arts
Abstract
This chapter explores Ellison’s critical engagement with the black cultural radicalisms of the Black Power era (c. 1965-75). The chapter’s main focus is Ellison’s response to the writer-activist Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones). For Ellison, the work of 1960s black radicals was an unwarranted, even unprincipled refusal of the promise of American cultural pluralism, a promise that blacks themselves had long struggled mightily to fulfill. But Baraka’s generation had reckoned seriously with pluralism; it was not simply Black Power’s other. Indeed, a number of Baraka’s contemporaries embraced Ellison’s pluralist interventions as a usable black past.
Department(s)
English
Document Type
Article
DOI
10.1017/9781108773546.016
Keywords
Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Black Power, cultural pluralism, radicalism, Ralph Ellison
Publication Date
1-1-2021
Recommended Citation
Calihman, Matthew S., "Black Power and Black Arts" (2021). Faculty Scholarship. 873.
https://bearworks.missouristate.edu/articles00/873
Journal Title
Ralph Ellison in Context
