Organization of Black American Culture

The Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC) was conceived during the era of the Civil Rights Movement by Hoyt W. Fuller as a collective of African-American writers, artists, historians, educators, intellectuals, community activists, and others. Founded on Southside Chicago in May 1967 by a group of Black intellectuals that included Fuller (editor of Negro Digest), the poet Conrad Kent Rivers, and Gerald McWorter (later Abdul Alkalimat),[1] OBAC aimed to coordinate artistic support in the struggle for freedom, justice and equality of opportunity for African Americans. The organization had workshops for visual arts, theater, and writing, and produced two publications: a newsletter, Cumbaya, and the magazine Nommo.[1]

Background

Among those associated at various times with the OBAC Writers Workshop are founding member Don L. Lee (now Haki Madhubuti), Carolyn Rodgers, Angela Jackson, Sterling Plumpp, Sam Greenlee, Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Johari Amini, D. L. Crockett-Smith, Cecil Brown, Sandra Jackson-Opoku, and other writers of national stature.[1][2]

The Theater Workshop eventually led to the first black theater in Chicago, Kuumba Theater.

Members of the OBAC Visual Workshop produced a mural dedicated to African-American heroes such as Muhammad Ali, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Malcolm X, known as the Wall of Respect.[3] The artists involved included William Walker, Wadsworth Jarrell and Jeff Donaldson, who has written of the collective's determination to produce a "collaborative work as a contribution to the community".[4] Donaldson went on to found the Coalition of Black Revolutionary Artists (COBRA), later renamed the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists (AfriCOBRA)[5] in support of Pan-Africanism.

After the visual arts and the drama workshops closed, OBAC became solely a writers' workshop within a couple of years, and continued in that form until 1992, surviving longer than any other literary group of the Black Arts Movement that flourished in the 1960s and '70s.[1] As S. Brandi Barnes, former treasurer and subsequently director of OBAC-Writers Workshop, wrote in 2010:

"By the mid 1990s, the writers workshop closed its doors — for a while.

Former OBAC member and adjunct professor Collette Armstead returned to Chicago in 2004. She convinced Angela Jackson of the need to revive the workshop....

We have always been an organization built by committed volunteers, intellectuals, artists, writers, and community denizens—all of whom have held other day jobs. They blazed the trail, solidifying our place in the literary archives and canon of Chicago and America.

...OBAC-WW has been reconstructed to continue our advocacy for all writers, and in particular for African-American writers. Part of our future plans include involving younger generations, so that tradition and new creations will continue."[6]

Bibliography

  • NOMMO: A Literary Legacy of Black Chicago (1987), edited by Carol A. Parks.
  • NOMMO2: Remembering Ourselves Whole

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "OBAC Writers' Workshop", Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History. Encyclopedia.com.
  2. ↑ Black Arts Interactive.
  3. ↑ Timeline, Perceptions of Black.
  4. ↑ Jeff Donaldson, "The Rise, Fall and Legacy of the Wall of Respect Movement", in International Review of African American Art, vol. 15, no. 1 (1991), pp. 22–26.
  5. ↑ AfriCOBRA website.
  6. ↑ S. Brandi Barnes, "The Torch Is Lit: The Organization of Black American Culture, Past and Present", Chicago Artists Resource, Spring 2010.
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