Tom Feelings: A Black Arts Movement

Abstract

When I was eight years old, my Aunt Jean gave me a book that she had hoped would end my fixation on Christopher Robin. I looked at it and was genuinely thrilled to see faces that looked like mine. However, hours later, Christopher Robin, Pooh, and I were off search of Piglet. Despite losing that battle, she continued giving me and all her nieces and nephews books written by Black people and illustrated with Black faces for Black children. At Christmas and on birthdays she waged war, setting her books against Pooh, Madeleine, and all little White princes and princesses entrenched my bookcase. It was not until I was a young adult that I began to understand my Aunt Jean's persistence. She was kind of stalwart soldier cultural revolution 1960s Black Arts Movement called for, as was Tom Feelings. Since he began to illustrate picture books 1960s, Tom Feelings has waged a persistent war field of children's literature. If Black Arts Movement died 1970s, then somebody forgot to tell him, for throughout his career, Feelings's work has mirrored Movement's goals and aesthetics. A look at his body of work reveals that Black Arts Movement was not a failure. Considered toto, Feelings's work is a visual record of what happened to Black Arts Movement. In his autobiography Black Pilgrimage, Feelings states he was raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a Black community Brooklyn (7). After serving Air Force, he entered art school late 1950s, a period he describes as a time of growing, active Black protest (11). Even then his awareness of burgeoning Civil Rights Movement informed his decisions. He describes an incident which he walked out of an art class after asking lecturer, Weren't there any Black artists of significance? No, he said. Well what about African Art? I asked. a different class. That's primitive art, lecturer replied. I walked out of class. I had to reject a history that did not include me. (11) Allowing for Feelings's own romanticization of his life, this story illustrates an early sense of commitment to his heritage. At this time, Feelings's illustrations were drawn from what he knew. He took his sketch pad and went into bars, schools, homes, and streets [he] knew so (13). A survey of his early work reveals black-and-white line drawings of Black men, women, and children engaged everyday activities. They were little more than depictions of Black life an urban setting like Brooklyn. Feelings did not find a concrete sense of purpose until he joined African Jazz Society of Harlem, which he considered to be first organization to support idea that Black is beautiful and that Africa is our (18). Feelings states that the instinctive feelings I had always had and vague ideas I had wanted to believe became crystallized when Cecil Braithwaite, president, spoke of us as a people who were African and should be proud of it. We defined our own standards and embraced our African heritage (20). group followed teachings of Marcus Garvey, who advanced theory of Africa as a home for American Blacks - or, rather, Africans living abroad. Garvey advocated Blacks returning to their ancestral homeland, to help build and restore it to its highest potential. It was this focus on Africa, as well as burgeoning Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, that gave rise to Black Arts Movement. Black Arts Movement was intrinsically tied to Black Power Movement. In his 1968 essay The Black Arts Movement, Larry Neal described Black Power Movement's overarching concern as the necessity for Black people to define world their own terms (184). In their book Black Power, Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton declared that Black Power is a call for Black People this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community. …