Although the term Black Aesthetic is most often
associated with the theoretical thought that shaped
primarily the poetry, drama, and nonfiction prose
produced during the Black Arts Movement, Black
Aesthetic thought is best understood when exam-
ined as part of the continuum of African-American
critical concerns about the nature and purpose of
the literature and art of African Americans. Some
critics, including Reginald Martin, have argued
that the Black Aesthetic during the 1960s is only
one of several phases of Black Aesthetic thought,
ranging from the articulation of freedom cries by
slaves and former slaves during the antebellum pe-
riod and beyond, to negotiations of civil liberties
and rights through the 20th century until the end
of the Civil Rights movement; the third phase cov-
ered only a short period of years during the 1960s.
Nevertheless, today the Black Aesthetic, as well
as the Black Arts Movement as a whole, is often
narrowly defined and characterized by its most ex-
treme or problematic pronouncements. Even Larry
Neal had revised many of his earlier views before
his untimely death in 1981. Many of those who
were at the forefront of developing Black Aesthetic
thought were poets and dramatists, but as DARWIN
T. TURNER has noted, the theory of the art actually
preceded the art itself, a progression that, in retro-
spect, was possibly the movement’s tragic flaw.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fabio, Sarah Webster. “Tripping with Black Writ-
ing.” In Within the Circle: An Anthology of African
American Literary Criticism from the Harlem Re-
naissance to the Present, edited by Angelyn Mitch-
ell, 224–231. Durham, N.C.: Duke University
Press, 1994.
Gayle, Addison, Jr. The Black Aesthetic. New York:
Doubleday, 1971.
Henderson, Stephen. “The Form of Things Un-
known.” Introduction to Understanding the New
Black Poetry: Black Speech and Black Music as Po-
etic References, 3–69. New York: William Morrow,
1972.
Jones, LeRoi, and Larry Neal. Black Fire: An Anthol-
ogy of Afro-American Writing. New York: William
Morrow, 1971.
Seibles, Timothy. “A Quilt in Shades of Black: The
Black Aesthetic in Twentieth-Century African
American Poetry.” In A Profile of Twentieth-Cen-
tury American Poetry, edited by Jack Myers and
David Wojahn, 158–189. Carbondale: Southern
Illinois University Press, 1991.
Reggie YoungBlack American Literature: Essays, Poetry,
Fiction, Drama Darwin T. Turner, ed.
(1970)
Formerly published in separate volumes (by C. E.
Merrill in 1969), Black American Literature: Es-
says, Poetry, Fiction, Drama was a central part of
a core of anthologies of black writing for college
and university classrooms during the 1970s and
1980s. This anthology was part of a growing body
of material used in the scholarship and research
of developing programs and departments in Afri-
can-American studies. In the introduction to the
selection of 15 essays, DARWIN T. TURNER provides
historical background and analysis of essays rang-
ing from Jupiter Hammon’s “Address to Negroes
in the State of New York” (1787) to Eldridge’s
“The White Race and Its Heroes” (1968). Within
this 181-year span of essays, Turner demonstrates
that black essayists have evolved from insisting on
black inclusion in American democracy to ques-
tioning the standards on which democracy rests.
Turner’s design is also to include examples that
do not focus on race, such as the essay “Letter XI”
by William Wells Brown, from his 1852 collection
Three Years in Europe; or, Places I Have Seen and
People I Have Met.
The selections in volume 2 of Turner’s anthol-
ogy point to the developing subject matter and
style of such poets as Lucy Terry (whose poem
“Bars Fight” [1746] was the first known poem
written by a black American), PHILLIS WHEATLEY,
and GEORGE MOSES HORTON. Turner observes that
later poets, like those from the HARLEM RENAIS-
SANCE, were given the opportunity to come to-
gether as artists and become “aware of the ideas
circulating among artists of their own race” (160).Black American Literature: Essays, Poetry, Fiction, Drama 47