Students will analyze the influence of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s on cultural traditions, identifying new artistic and spiritual expressions reflected and produced by the movement.
Essential Knowledge
12.A. From its beginnings, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s was deeply influenced by poets, novelists and playwrights dating back to the Harlem Renaissance and earlier.
12.B. Jazz, blues and the culture that surrounded them created communities where innovative African American thought could thrive. African American spirituals and folk and gospel songs were equally important to the growth and development of the movement. Singing “freedom songs” was a part of many organizing campaigns and mass demonstrations.
12.C. Directly inspired by Black Power and the call for self-determination, the Black Arts Movement brought together artists who wished to create politically engaged work based on the Black experience. The Black Arts Movement is widely credited with inspiring similar movements among artists of other ethnic identities.
12.D. Striving to highlight the history and the progress yet to be made, artists continue to center the movement in their work today.
Related Resources
- [12.A.] Educators can use the Phillips Collection lesson “The Legacy of the Harlem Renaissance” to teach about how Langston Hughes’ famous essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” prefigured some key ideas of the Black Arts Movement.
- [12.A.] James Baldwin was one of the most influential writers of the movement. For an introduction to Baldwin’s work that illustrates one way an artist could engage the key ideas—particularly around integration—that motivated the Black Power movement, students can read and discuss “A Letter to My Nephew.” To connect with Baldwin’s activism, students can watch the video or read the transcript of “James Baldwin vs. William F. Buckley Debate at Cambridge 1965.” Both works are available in the LFJ text library.
- [12.B.] To understand the role of music in the movement, students can explore the SNCC Digital Gateway’s resources on the Freedom Singers, who were heavily involved with the organization and often sang at meetings, raised money and used songs to corral the community.
- [12.B.] Students can listen to some of the songs often sung at protests, such as the version of “Oh, Freedom” sung by the Golden Gospel Singers.
- [12.B.] Students can also study the popular music of the civil rights era using the same methods they would use to analyze written primary sources, such as learning the context of the music’s creation. For example, students might analyze Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come,” written shortly after his arrest for attempting to check into a whites-only motel.
- [12.B.] Focusing on one artist can also provide a useful understanding of the intersections between art and activism. For example, students might listen to and analyze Nina Simone’s song “Mississippi Goddam,” written after the assassination of activist Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi. They can learn more about Simone by reading the JAZZ.FM91 article “How Nina Simone Used Protest Music To Challenge Racial Discrimination” or by watching the Netflix documentary What Happened, Miss Simone?
- [12.B.] Educators looking for additional ideas for teaching the music of the civil rights era can listen to the Teaching Hard History podcast episode “A Playlist for the Movement.”
- [12.C.] One way for students to delve into the history of the Black Arts Movement is to read some of the statements from artists themselves about how they saw the purpose of their work. bell hooks’ “An Aesthetic of Blackness: Strange and Oppositional” discusses the intersections of theory, art, identity and experience. And in “The Black Arts Movement,” Larry Neal offers an overview of the movement and connects aesthetics, politics and power. Both are available from LFJ’s text library and JSTOR.
- [12.C.] To understand the important role of theater in the Black Arts Movement, students can read and discuss Amiri Baraka’s 1965 essay “The Revolutionary Theatre” in which Baraka (under the name LeRoi Jones), writing five months after the murder of Malcolm X, calls for a new kind of theater.
- [12.C.] August Wilson’s 1996 speech “The Ground on Which I Stand” (available from the LFJ text library and American Theatre magazine) reflects on the importance of representation in theater and the role of Black Power in art.
- [12.C.] Students are likely already familiar with some of the best-known poets of the Black Arts Movement, but analyzing their work within the context of the Black freedom struggle is a great way to better understand how these artists saw their poetry and their politics intersecting. For one example, read Maya Angelou’s “Caged Bird” and “Still I Rise” (both available in the LFJ text library) through the lens of the Black Arts Movement.
- [12.C.] To get a sense of the range of Black Arts poetry, students can also analyze poems they may be unfamiliar with, like Gil Scott-Heron’s 1970 spoken-word poem “Whitey on the Moon” (available in the LFJ text library).
- [12.C.] For an example of how Black Arts Movement artists influenced one another, students can learn about playwright Lorraine Hansberry, whose play A Raisin in the Sun was the first play written by a Black woman to be produced on Broadway. In the PBS short video “Lorraine Hansberry on Being Young, Gifted and Black,” the author celebrates a group of teens she describes using that phrase, one later used as the title of a play based on Hansberry’s own writings—and as inspiration for Nina Simone and Weldon Irvine, who wrote the civil rights anthem “To Be Young, Gifted and Black” in her honor.
- [12.D.] Sho Baraka’s song “Myhood, U.S.A., 1937,” released in 2016, goes through the history of violent backlash against Black progress, systemic racism throughout the 20th century, and the carceral state.
- [12.D.] Gary Clark Jr.’s song “This Land,” released in 2019, is an anthem expressing Black people’s claims to the United States and to American identity while highlighting the present-day efforts of white supremacists to halt Black progress.
