Askia Toure

The Black Arts Cultural Revolution, along with the Black Power Revolution from 1964 to 1978, will go down in History as the African American Intifada! We witnessed the epic of the entire Black Nation, led by the masses of Black Working class people, rising up against U.S.imperialism and national oppression/apartheid. Literally "Dancin' in the Streets" fighting the repressive forces of U.S. police, military, and vigilante oppression.
In the realm of Culture, the Black Arts Movement was the largest mass cultural movement of the Twentieth Century. It was composed of poets, dramatists, visual artists, film-makers, musicians, led by a dedicated Cadre of Maroon visionaries who wrote a new chapter in African American history with the development of an ethnic-based Aesthetic. The Black Arts/Africana visionaries challenged the racist, Eurocentric view of culture as an activity of elitist, mainly white, males. The Movement produced a Galaxy of Revolutionary Journals, namely "Black America," "Soulbook," "Black Dialogue," the "Journal of Black Poetry," "Black Theater," and "Liberator" magazine, to name the most publicly recognized. Literaly thousands of students, Inner City youths,
young activists and scholars were nutured at the fountains of these liberation organs. Three men are usually credited with spearheading this seminal, Poet-Critic-Dramatist, Amiri Baraka, Poet-Critic-Scholar, Larry Neal, and Poet-Editor-Activist, Askia Toure'.

In truth, maybe in the beginning; but the dynamic role of Black Women has been selectively omitted from this Revolution. Poet-Critic-Dramatist, Sonia Sanchez, Critic- Scholar-Activist, Carolyn Fowler, Poet-Editor-Educator, Sarah Webster Fabio, Poet-Editor-Educator, Carolyn Rogers, Poet-Educator-Musician, Mari Evans and hundreds of politically active, female liberators were written out of history in an affort by racist, white bourgeois "feminists" and their negro "oreo" running dogs, in order to sabotage and slander the New Afrikan National Liberation Movement. Yes, there was quite a bit of sexism, macho and other backwardness among elements of both the cultural revolutionaries and the actual liberation fighters in the field, but the Liberation Organizations, such as the Republic of New Africa, the African Peoples Party, the League of Revolutionary Struggle, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, the African Peoples Socialist Party, and countless other formations were dialoguing and discuss these primary questions, when the entire Movement faced massive repression in the FBI-led COINTELPRO, in the late '60s and early '70s. Since that Period, formations like the Black Radical Congress, the Black Workers for Justice, the Black Liberation Army (which rescued Sis. Assata Shakur from prison) and dozens of other formations, such as NCOBRA, have emerged to continue the Maroon-like resistance of the Black Liberation Movement and Its Black Arts Intifada. I conclude this
introduction by stating that we, the African/New African Nation must write our own history so that our Collective wounds can be healed, and that we continue the business of National Liberation which many of our Elders and Comrades started and left for us, Sisters and Brothers, to complete. For Tom Feelings, June Jordan,
Ted Joans, Rob Penny, Carolyn Fowler, Abdul Rahman, Leon Thomas, Gwendolyn Brooks, Margaret Walker, Tony Cade Bambara, Audrey Lorde, John Henrik Clarke, Kwaku Olu, Yusef Iman, Queen Mother Moore, Many Thousands Gone...