The Black Arts Movement in Cleveland

Karamu House gained new energy and a new context from the Black Power and Black Arts movement, despite the fact that some of the student-body were Caucasian.  It made new cutting-edge black drama, visual arts, music, and literature.  Amiri Baraka’s play “Dutchman” played at Karamu the same year it debuted in New York.[1] Furthermore just as the Gilpin Players and Langston Hughes used Karamu for an artistic outlet, so too did Black Arts movement artists of the late 1960s and early 1970s.   

Donald Freeman, a Cleveland public school teacher, came under fire after writing an article in a Black Nationalist Magazine in 1965.[2]  He was associated with the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), a militant organization involved and aligned with other Black Nationalist groups in the city.  The Cleveland Press warned its readers in 1966 about its militant nature.  “Through its magazine Black America, published in Detroit and available here, it had condemned racial integration and called for the overthrow of America’s present form of government.”[3] His activities, including his correspondence, lectures, publications, and tours, led to the emergence of RAM and the Cleveland based Afro-American Institute.  The Afro-American Institute was primarily an agitational and educational institution, bringing together African American activists from the civil rights movement, labor movement, Black Nationalist movement, and Black Arts community.[4]  Finally, he also coedited the journal Vibration.  It was “. . . perhaps one of most culturally (and spiritually) oriented of all the journals associated with RAM . . .”[5]

[1]  Smethurst, 220-221.

[2] “Instructor Here Is a Writer for Liberation Front,” Cleveland Press, February 27, 1965, Microfiche “Freeman, Donald 1963-1970,” Cleveland Press Collection, Cleveland State University Special Collections.

[3] “Revolution Is Aim of Militant RAM,” Cleveland Press, August 10, 1966, Microfiche “Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM),” Cleveland Press Collection, Cleveland State University Special Collections.

[4]  Smethurst, 220.

[5] Ibid, 220.