New Ideas for Old

Abstract

The most fervent years of the new black aesthetic may be measured along a political time line, beginning roughly with the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the publication in that same year of ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’, and ending with the wholesale flight of American forces and their sympathizers from Vietnam in the fall of 1975. With the passage of the Civil Rights Act came the belief, among blacks and those sympathetic to their causes, that the time was right for a more aggressive and action-filled push for black rights. With this belief, blacks in increasing numbers pushed forth into areas which were before too fearsome to venture into; the talent had always been there, but not the opportunity to express that vast array of talent. Critical writing by black Americans reached an especially high level of output which had not been achieved before and has not been equalled since. By the fall of 1975, the best works by the leading aestheticians had been published, with the exception of The Journey Back (1980) by Houston Baker and Black Literature and Literary Theory by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (1984).1 The fascination with black writers had diminished considerably — only one black male writer, Ishmael Reed, continued to receive any considerable attention in the American press, and only a handful of black female writers were appointed by the publishing industry for themselves, or the merits of their work, as ‘representative’ of writing by black Americans.