Who can be born Black

by Mari Evans

Who can be born black

and not sing the wonder of it

the joy the challenge

and come together

in a coming togetherness

vibrating with the fire of pure knowing

reeling with power

ringing with a sound above sound above sound

to explode in a majesty of our oneness

our coming together in a coming togetherness

Who can be born Black and not exhale?

RESPONSE:

We have been born Black

and sing the wonder of it the joy the challenge

we have been born black and exhalt

PERFORMANCE

As a monumental figure in education and poetry, Mari Evans also played roles in shaping women’s history, politics, music, and drama.  Born on July 16, 1923, in Toledo, Ohio, Evans’ mother passed away when Evans was ten.  Her father immediately felt the need to encourage her in any way he could, cultivating her talent of writing that would later serve as her main career focus.

After attending public schools in her hometown, Evans attended the University of Toledo in the 1940s where she studied fashion design but left without a degree.  Her interests shifted to writing poetry and by 1969 she was a writer in residence at Indiana University-Purdue where she taught courses in African American Literature.  In 1969 she published her first work Where Is All the Music? followed by her more famous I Am a Black Woman (1970).  During this time Evans also worked as a producer, writer, and director of The Black Experience (1968-1973), a history documentary which aired on prime time in Indianapolis.  She also worked in theatre, adapting the musical Eyes (1979) from Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God as well as writing a choreopoem, River of My Song, and a one-woman theatre piece called Boochie.  While embracing her love for these and other projects, Evans served as a consultant for the National Endowment for the Arts from 1969 to 1970. Evans has published two collections of her poetry, Nightstar: 1973-1978 (1981) and A Dark and Splendid Mass (1992).

Evans has taught at a number of other institutions including Cornell, Northwestern, Washington University in St. Louis, Spelman College, the University of Miami at Coral Gables, and the State University of New York at Albany.  But she is best known for her talent in poetry and her work has appeared in more than one hundred anthologies.  Most of that work focuses on the celebration of Africa and the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement as well as other themes bringing to light the reality of the African American experience.  These projects were largely influenced by close friend Langston Hughes, who pushed Evans to write with confidence.  She subsequently became a well-respected figure in the Black Arts Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Evans now writes children’s books that concentrate on black history and culture for the younger population.  The most important of her countless awards for writing came in 1981 when she received the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Award.  Evans’ impact on Africa was reflected in 1997 when the Ugandan government issued a commemorative postage stamp in her honor.  Mari Evans is divorced with two sons and now resides in Indianapolis.

Nikki Giovanni was a critical voice of the Black Arts Movement. She published many poems that carry the spirit of the work and words of YGB.

Amiri Baraka was the founder and creator of what came to be known as the Black Arts Movement. His ideas about art and his personal transformation into a Black identity inspired many other poets and artists to make a similar change. Mr. Baraka lived out his life as a poet, activist, artist and philosopher.

Amiri Baraka (born Everett Leroy Jones; October 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014), previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amiri Baraka,[1] was an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays and music criticism. He was the author of numerous books of poetry and taught at several universities, including the University at Buffalo and Stony Brook University. He received the PEN/Beyond Margins Award in 2008 for Tales of the Out and the Gone.[5] Baraka's plays, poetry, and essays are defining texts for African-American culture.[6]

Baraka's career spanned nearly 52 years, and his themes range from black liberation to white racism. His notable poems include "The Music: Reflection on Jazz and Blues", "The Book of Monk", and "New Music, New Poetry", works that draw on topics from the worlds of society, music, and literature.[7]

Baraka's poetry and writing have attracted both high praise and condemnation. In the African-American community, some compare Baraka to James Baldwin and recognize him as one of the most respected and most widely published black writers of his generation,[8] though some have said his work is an expression of violence, misogyny, and homophobia.[9] Baraka's brief tenure as Poet Laureate of New Jersey (in 2002 and 2003) involved controversy over a public reading of his poem "Somebody Blew Up America?", which resulted in accusations of antisemitism and negative attention from critics and politicians.[10][11]. Amiri Baraka was the founder of the Black Arts Movement and is a giant in the pantheon of Black poets.