The extraordinarily productive life of curator, artist, and activist Margaret Burroughs was largely rooted in her work to establish and sustain two significant institutions in Chicago: the South Side Community Art Center (SSCAC), founded in 1940, and the DuSable Museum of African American History, founded in her living room in 1961. As Mary Ann Cain's South Side Venus: The Legacy of Margaret Burroughs reveals, the primary motivations for these efforts were love and hope. Burroughs was spurred by her love for Chicago's African American community-largely ill served by mainstream arts organizations-and by her hope that these new, black-run cultural centers would welcome many generations of aspiring artists and art lovers. This first, long-awaited biography of Burroughs draws on interviews with peers, colleagues, friends, and family, and extensive archival research at the DuSable Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Chicago Public Library. Cain traces Burroughs's multifaceted career, details her work and residency on Chicago's South Side, and highlights her relationships with other artists and culture makers. Here, we see Burroughs as teacher and mentor as well as institution builder. Anchored by the author's talks with Burroughs as they stroll through her beloved Bronzeville, and featuring portraits of Burroughs with family and friends, South Side Venus will enlighten anyone interested in Chicago, African American history, social justice, and the arts.

An electric collection of poetry. The reader will find a bold, strong poem for each crucial issue of Blackness. A "wake-up" call for Black consciousness.

Powerful prose, poetry, and jazz riffs chronicle the first 21 years of the life of Haki R. Madhubuti, formerly Don L. Lee: poet, publisher, editor, and activist. He was raised by his mother Maxine, whose life is also recounted--including gritty details of how she used her body to feed, house, and shelter her children without help from their absentee father. Despite the obstacles in his childhood, music and literature molded the young Don Lee, effectively saving his life.

This precious volume of new and selected poems justly widens Dr. Hord's space among the poets of the Black Arts Movement. He remains, as John O. Killers would state, one of the long distance runners. He is in a league with Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Askia Toure, Jayne Cortez, Eugene Redmond, Lucille Clifton, Kalamu ya Salaam, and others who created a movement that helped to change America and the world for the literate and liberated majority.

Brilliant Fire Amiri Baraka is an intergenerational collection of writing from poets, dramatists, musicians, educators, historians and cultural workers and theorists examining the work and influence of Amiri Baraka. The dramatist, novelist and poet, Amiri Baraka is one of the most respected and widely published African-American writers. With the beginning of Black Civil Rights Movements during the sixties, Baraka explored the anger of African-Americans and used his writings as a weapon against racism. Also, he advocated scientific socialism with his revolutionary inclined poems and aimed at creating aesthetic through them. Amiri Baraka s writing career spans over nearly fifty years and has mostly focused on the subjects of Black Liberation and White Racism. Often recognized as a key founder of the Black Arts Movement, Amiri Baraka was a prolific writer and world-renowned poet. While this book provides its contributors a forum in which to examine his poetic and artistic aesthetics, Brilliant Flame will more importantly bring to the forefront Baraka s reach as political activist, historian and cultural visionary."

Haki Madhubuti (Don L. Lee) first came in contact with Agyei Akoto Kehembe, Tuck, Ron Anderson, and Aiedo Mamadi in 1971 while teaching at Howard University. Madhubuti was teaching a course entitled Worldview: Toward a New Consciousness, which attracted many brothers and sisters from the Washington, D.C. community. The music and poetry on this collection is the result of that encounter.

1. We are a Nation 1: 13
2. Talking Stick 7: 46
3. The Family 1: 37
4. Black Woman 9: 33
5. Walk the Way the New World 6: 17
6. Collectivity: 38
7. Rise, Vision, Comin 12: 23
8. Black Man 9: 22
9. We Wound Each Other 1: 16