Tom Feelings: a Black Arts Movement

African American Review, Spring, 1998 by Vincent Steele

In his autobiography Black Pilgrimage, Feelings states he was raised "in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a Black community in Brooklyn" (7). After serving in the Air Force, he entered art school in the late 1950s, a period he describes as a "time of growing, active Black protest" (11). Even then his awareness of the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement informed his decisions. He describes an incident in which he walked out of an art class after asking the lecturer,

"Weren't there any Black artists of significance?"

"No," he said.

"Well what about African Art?" I asked.

"That's in a different class. That's primitive art," the lecturer replied. I walked out of the 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 the bars, schools, homes, and streets [he] knew so well" (13). A survey of his early work reveals black-and-white line drawings of Black men, women, and children engaged in everyday activities. They were little more than depictions of Black life in an urban setting like Brooklyn.

Feelings did not find a concrete sense of purpose until he joined the African Jazz Society of Harlem, which he considered to be the "first organization to support the idea that Black is beautiful and that Africa is our home" (18). Feelings states that "the instinctive feelings I had always had and the vague ideas I had wanted to believe in became crystallized when Cecil Braithwaite, the 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). The group followed the teachings of Marcus Garvey, who advanced the theory of Africa as a home for American Blacks - or, rather, Africans living abroad. Garvey advocated Blacks returning to "Africa, their ancestral homeland, to help build and restore it to its highest potential." It was this focus on Africa, as well as the burgeoning Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, that gave rise to the Black Arts Movement.

The Black Arts Movement was intrinsically tied to the Black Power Movement. In his 1968 essay "The Black Arts Movement," Larry Neal described the Black Power Movement's overarching concern as "the necessity for Black people to define the world in 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 in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community. It is a call for Black People to begin to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations and to support their own organizations. It is a call to reject the racist institutions and values of [American] society. (43-44)

Black Power called for Black flight from an America defined by the values and desires of the White oppressor, for revolution, and, as Larry Neal asserts, the Black Arts Movement was its "aesthetic and spiritual sister" (184). It envisioned an art that spoke directly to "the needs and aspirations of Black America." The tandem movements advocated "a cultural revolution in art and ideas" (185).

Art became a weapon with which to achieve the aims of the Black Power Movement. The credo of the Black Arts Movement, "Art is the Arm of the Revolution," embraced the notion that all forms of Black art were weapons for overthrowing White oppression and the White aesthetic. In his 1967 essay "Black Cultural Nationalism," Ron Karenga, a leader in the explication of the burgeoning movement, asserted that "all Black art, irregardless of any technical requirements, must have three basic characteristics which make it revolutionary. In brief, it must be functional, collective and committed" (33). Art was deemed functional if it exposed the enemy (specifically Whites), praised Black people, and supported the revolution. Collective meant the work was done by Black people, about Black people, and for Black people. Lastly, the art had to commit Blacks to a future that was wholly their own. African American children's picture books are rarely associated with the Black Arts Movement.

Generally, only poets, playwrights, and, to a lesser degree, visual artists are considered when examining African American artists' response to the Black Arts Movement's clarion call for Black images and visible affirmations of Black beauty. However, the emphasis on utility and pedagogy married quite easily with the inherently didactic nature of children's literature. Thus, even before Feelings joined the African Jazz Society of Harlem, he was producing "Black art."

One of his first projects was a comic strip entitled "Tommy Traveler In The World of Black History." He drew the strip sometime prior to 1960, because he felt "there was a need for Black heroes" (Black Pilgrimage 12). In it a young Black boy who does not find enough books on Black history in the public library goes to the house of a Black doctor who allows him to read the books in his private collection. Tommy falls asleep and "dreams" himself into the stories he reads. Beyond educating Black children about their own cultural heroes, the comic strip utilized a dream metaphor whereby the children themselves could become the heroes portrayed in the strip. It is inferred that the public library with its lack of books about Black people is the enemy. By emulating Tommy and learning about their cultural heritage, Black children can overcome the enemy, or at least the obstacles that stand in the way of self-knowledge.