Sanchez, Sonia 253wife. Th ese life-changing events became the catalyst for
Sanchez to begin writing. Th e library became a regular fi eld
trip for Sanchez, and a black female librarian introduced her
to a book called Negro Poetry. Sanchez continued to study
and write using the pen, as opposed to her voice, to express
her deepest feelings about white supremacy, black unity,
and the relationships between black women and men.
Sanchez earned a bachelor’s degree from Hunter Col-
lege. Later, Sanchez received a postgraduate degree, study-
ing poetry with Louise Bogan, at New York University in- Th is is also where she formed a writers group with
other poets from in and around Greenwich Village. Other
members of the poetry group included Amiri Baraka (LeRoi
Jones) and Askia Muhammad Touré. Newly divorced from
Puerto Rican immigrant Albert Sanchez, Sanchez began to
perform her fi rst poetry readings at local bars and clubs.
Her group wanted to take its poetry to places that it was not
normally heard. While Sanchez worked with this particular
group, she was able to publish her fi rst poem.
Shortly thereaft er, Sanchez, Haki R. Madhubuti (Don
L. Lee), Nikki Giovanni, and Etheridge Knight formed the
“Broadside Quartet,” a group of black poets known for their
strident political beliefs. Th is same group produced Broad-
side Press, an African American–owned and operated press.
Sanchez and the other members of the group oft en put their
royalties back into the press to continue publishing and in-
vesting the company. Th e group held the conviction that
African American arts were a needed form of expression
within the larger African American community. Sanchez
went onto to marry Etheridge Knight and later had three
children with him, Anita, Morani Neusi, and Mungu Neusi,
although the marriage ultimately ended in divorce.
With the unfolding Black Nationalist movement in the
United States, the tones and sentiments within Sanchez’s
poetry began to change. Her ontological stance began to
take on the rhetoric and energy of the budding national-
ist movement in the United States and abroad. For the fi rst
time, Sanchez’s as well as other African American poets’
work began to sing the praises of Malcolm X, to call for
African Americans to begin to reclaim and reconnect with
their African heritage, and to allow African Americans to
conceive of a world and life without the presence of white
supremacy and fear. One of the most intricate revolution-
ary stances Sanchez adopted in her poetry was her rejection
of Western academic jargon and her embracing of the “lan-
guage of the streets.” Sanchez oft en used lowercase letters,
Elkins, Stanley. Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and
Intellectual Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959.
Fredrickson, George, and Christopher Lasch. “Resistance to Slav-
ery.” In Th e Debate over Slavery: Stanley Elkins and His Crit-
ics, ed. Ann Lane. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971.
Genovese, Eugene. “Rebelliousness and Docility in the Slave: A
Critique of the Stanley Elkins Th esis.” In Th e Debate over
Slavery: Stanley Elkins and His Critics, ed. Ann J. Lane. Ur-
bana: University of Illinois Press, 1971.
Nuruddin, Yusuf. “Th e Sambo Th esis Revisited: Slavery’s Impact
upon the African American Personality.” Socialism and De-
mocracy 17, no. 1 (2003):291–338.
Patterson, Orlando. “Quashee.” In Th e Debate over Slavery: Stanley
Elkins and His Critics, ed. Ann J. Lane. Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1971.
Stampp, Kenneth. “Rebels and Sambos: Th e Search for the Ne-
gro’s Personality in Slavery.” Journal of Negro History 37, no.
3 (1971):367–92.
Sanchez, Sonia
Sonia Sanchez (1934–) is an author and activist who played
a signifi cant role in the black arts movement and continues
to agitate for black civil rights in the 21st century. Born Wil-
sonia Benita Driver in Birmingham, Alabama, Sonia San-
chez’s parents were Wilson L. and Lena (Jones) Driver. She
has one sibling, Pat, and her mother died while attempting
to deliver twins when Sonia was one year old. Sonia and
Pat were raised by their paternal grandmother and relatives
until Sanchez was six.
In the late 1930s, Birmingham, Alabama, was seg-
regated, and African Americans routinely had to endure
violence, ridicule, cruelty, and continuing harassment at
the hands of whites. One day, while Sanchez was riding the
bus with her aunt Pauline, the bus continued to become
crowded with white passengers, pushing the African Amer-
icans riders to the back of the bus. Th e bus driver told all of
the African American passengers to exit the bus, and when
Sanchez’s aunt refused to get off the bus, the driver threat-
ened to physically remove her. Sanchez’s aunt spit on the
driver and was arrested. Sanchez’s family felt that her aunt
had to leave Birmingham that night in order for the rest of
the family to stay there without harassment.
By 1943, Sanchez had lost her mother and her grand-
mother and had consistently dealt with the annals of racism
and white supremacy in the South. It was also within that
same year that Sanchez and her sister Pat had to move to
Harlem, New York, to live with their father and his third