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An Analysis Of Larry Neal's Black Fire And The Black Arts Movement

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Author: Larry Neal was born September 5, 1937. He was an African American writer and one of the most well known figures of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Neal was born in Atlanta, GA. He graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1961, receiving an M.A. in 1963. Soon after, he set the tone for African-American writers who emerged during the Civil Rights Movement, championing the search and discovery of a distinctive African-American aesthetic. His early articles, including "The Negro in the Theater" (1964) and "Cultural Front" (1965) asserted the need for separate cultural forms to develop Black artists in a racist society. In 1968, Neal’s "Black Fire" and "The Black Arts Movement" further developed this perspective. Neal argued that the purpose of Black arts was to effect a “radical reordering of the Western cultural aesthetic,” in part …show more content…

Neal was an instructor at the City College of New York from 1968 to 1969. He taught at Wesleyan University until 1970 and Yale University from 1970 to 1975. Near the end of the 1970s, Neal was reconsidering his view of Black culture. He seemed to give credence to a widening sphere of Black artistic expression, one of more inclusiveness within a white environment in which Black art exists. Other late works by Neal include a play, "In an Upstate Motel," which premiered in New York in 1981, the year of his death from a heart attack. Summary: The Black Arts Movement is very much similar to the Black Power concept. The Black Arts Movement speaks directly to the needs and aspiration of Black American. Both movements desire for self-determination and nationhood. However, one is concerned with the relationship between art and politics; the other with the art and

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Commenting on his days at the the University of Nebraska, where he won a prize for drawing, he recalled: "I was the the only black student there. Because I was sturdy and friendly, I became popular with both faculty and students. "("Aaron Douglas." Wikipedia). He is sometimes referred to the father of “black american art” and contributed illustrations to newspapers as well as creating his own art("Aaron Douglas."

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