Harlem Renaissance, and Hughes’s postscript to
the autobiography notes the close of the era.
Hughes’s The Big Sea provides a unique and in-
timate look into the Harlem Renaissance, taking
the reader beyond the propaganda and manifes-
tos. It offers not only a glimpse of the glittering
existence of the literati but also an uncompromis-
ing look into the daily struggles of the young artist
during Harlem’s heyday.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Berry, Faith. Langston Hughes: Before and Beyond
Harlem. Westport, Conn.: L. Hill, 1983.
Haskins, James. Always Movin’ On: The Life of Langston
Hughes. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1993.
Hughes, Langston. The Big Sea: An Autobiography.
New York: A. A. Knopf, 1940.
———. I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical
Journey. New York: Rinehart, 1956.
Rampersad, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Barbara Wilcots
Black Aesthetic
This movement represents the attempt to formu-
late theories to govern the production of African-
American artistic expression in relation to the
evolving nature of black life in the United States
in the aftermath of the organized movement for
civil rights in the 1960s. When the racial designa-
tion and self-identity of African Americans under-
went a radical change (from “Negro” to “black”)
after the declaration of “black power,” many of the
younger, more militant voices of the artistic com-
munity called for a redefinition and new direc-
tion for black literature. Proponents of the Black
Aesthetic sought to influence the development of
black expressive works by insisting that black writ-
ers adhere to the nationalistic principles that had
emerged as the most visible, if not dominant, mode
of black intellectual thought. Just as the BLACK
ARTS MOVEMENT served as the cultural arm of the
BLACK POWER movement, the Black Aesthetic was
an attempt to dictate the content, style, and form
of African-American writing so that the works
produced by writers from the black community
would adhere to black revolutionary principles.
As a result, Black Aesthetic advocates most often
proclaimed that black works had to be relevant to
black political causes; they had to actively seek to
improve the social conditions of the black masses.
The most widely discussed Black Aesthetic
documents include the seminal nationalist anthol-
ogy BLACK FIRE (1968), edited by AMIRI BARAKA and
LARRY NEAL, which includes Neal’s famous after-
word, “And Shine Swam On,” in which he writes,
“Finally, the black artist must link his work to the
struggle for his liberation and the liberation of his
brothers and sisters.... The artist and the political
activist are one. They are both shapers of the future
reality. Both understand and manipulate the col-
lective myths of the race. Both are warrior priests,
lovers and destroyers. For the first violence will
be internal—the destruction of a weak spiritual
self for a more perfect self ” (655–656). For Neal,
the goal of the black artist was to help destroy the
“double consciousness”—the source of tension “in
the souls of black folks.”
Among some of the other important publica-
tions containing Black Aesthetic writings are AD-
DISON GAYLE, JR.’s collection of essays, The Black
Aesthetic (1971), and STEPHEN HENDERSON’s an-
thology, Understanding the New Black Poetry
(1972). Gayle’s volume applies Black Aesthetic
principles to various genres of black artistic ex-
pression while offering essays that explore Black
Aesthetic thought of writers and scholars from
earlier generations, such as W. E. B. DUBOIS, ALAIN
LOCKE, and LANGSTON HUGHES. With this volume
the term Black Aesthetic became the formal desig-
nation for the theoretical ideas that would govern
“committed” black writings. Henderson’s intro-
duction to his anthology, “The Form of Things
Unknown,” represents one of the most important
detailed, theoretical discussions of “black” poetry
in the history of the literary tradition to date, one
that attempts to explore the historical development
of Black Aesthetic concerns in the poetry itself as
opposed to separating the works of recent writers
from their historical roots.46 Black Aesthetic