SOURCE: Boyd, Melba Joyce. “‘Prophets for a New Day’: The Cultural Activism of Margaret Danner, Margaret Burroughs, Gwendolyn Brooks and Margaret Walker during the Black Arts Movement.” Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses 37 (November 1998): 55-67.

In the following essay, Boyd examines the contributions of Walker and three black female writers to the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and places them in relationship to one another and to their times.

The Black Arts Movement (1965-1977) was an outgrowth of the Civil Rights Movement, and the impetus of this cultural revolution was the consequence of an artist/activist consciousness that embraced the notion of race pride, self determination and the need to engage in institution building. In the Midwest, Chicago and Detroit were key cities during this era because they contained large and industrious African American populations and housed major cultural institutions. The Du Sable Museum of African...