Book Of The Month

Malcolm X and the Poetics of Haki Madhubuti
By
Dr. Regina Jennings

In this book, an international book Award Winner, I trace the influence that the oratory of Malcolm X had on the poets of the 1960s, and particularly, the poet, essayist and institution builder, Haki Madhubuti. To clarify this literary journey, I begin in the changing of ethnic names of the African groups that were stolen, chained and sailed to the Americas for centuries of free labor. The changing of the names opened the African to become a commodity, so thought their new owners. Significantly, this text argues that the African went from negro/nigger for centuries and when the oratory of Malcolm X infused Black American thought, what Malcolm X called “the so-called n/Negro” travelled upwards into a Black Power that Malcolm X pontificated. Poets of the 1960s categorized now as the “Black Arts Movement” heard Malcolm’s voice and made him their muse. Not only did Madhubuti make Malcolm his muse, he created a brick-and-mortar institution, Third World Press, which enabled him and other poets such as Sonia Sanchez to publish poetry that spoke revolution in many forms to the people who have now become African American and this seismic shift I credit to Malcolm X. This book examines poetry from enslaved poets to Marcus Garvey and Langston Hughes to Madhubuti and other powerful voices of the 1960s, Black Arts. In the 1960s, Black was made Beautiful.