The Daily Orange

Media Credit: Stephen Dockery

Voices from the past will be heard again at Syracuse University this semester.

Tucked away on the sixth floor of E.S. Bird Library, the SU Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) presents "The Small Press and the Black Arts Movement," an exhibition featuring prominent black writers and artists of the Black Arts Movement during the 1960s and 1970s.

The display contains a large assortment of books, periodicals and documents that shaped the course of history during the time period.

Often paired with the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Arts Movement created a platform for minority voices and initiated a debate about American values in this country.

The SCRC obtained some of the displayed works recently, said Kathleen Manwaring, curator of manuscripts for the SCRC, but the exhibit has been years in the making.

"We have been collecting in this area for quite a while," Manwaring said. "Many of the publications were acquired by the library as early as the 1970s."

The exhibit is supported and funded by the Peter Graham Fund for Radicalism in Literature and Art.

The writings of Amiri Baraka are the focal point of the exhibit. Baraka has often been called "the founder of the Black Arts Movement," Manwaring said.

Baraka served as editor of the periodical Yugen, an underground poetry magazine, for 15 years. Later he became a poet, playwright and received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as many other awards.

Much of the current exhibit was influenced by Baraka's work. Publications of the Broadside Press and Third World Press are featured in the display. Both brought attention to the writings of many important blacks, namely poet Gwendolyn Brooks, playwright Ed Bullins and editor Sam Cornish.

The exhibit grew out of the SCRC's collection of manuscripts and poetry, Manwaring said.

Publications from the Heritage Series of Black Poetry, a 27-volume series published in the 1960s, are on display. Published by Paul Breman in London, the series contained work by black poets who were largely unknown.

This exhibit is "an invitation to examine the resources that the SCRC has gathered in the hope that they will inspire scholarly inquiry, or at least conversation, about this important era in American cultural history," according to the SCRC Web site.

"The Small Press and the Black Arts Movement" is open for viewing weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. through May 1. It is free and open to the public.

dpscorpi@syr.edu

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