Haki R. Madhubuti

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Haki R. Madhubuti

American author, publisher and educator

Also known as: Don Luther Lee

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Original name:: Don Luther Lee

Born:: February 23, 1942, Little Rock, Arkansas, U.S. (age 83)

Founder:: Third World Press

Notable Works:: “Black Men: Obselete, Single, Dangerous?: Afrikan American Families in Transition: Essays in Discovery, Solution, and Hope”; “Book of Life”; “Don’t Cry, Scream”; “From Plan to Planet-Life Studies: The Need for Afrikan Minds and Institutions”; “GroundWork”; “Killing Memory, Seeking Ancestors”; “Tough Notes: A Healing Call for Creating Exceptional Black Men: Affirmations, Meditations, Readings, and Strategies”; “YellowBlack: The First Twenty-One Years of a Poet’s Life”

Movement / Style:: Black Arts movement

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Haki R. Madhubuti (born February 23, 1942, Little Rock, Arkansas, U.S.) is an African American author, publisher, and teacher who was perhaps best known for his poetry.

Don Luther Lee attended several colleges in Chicago and graduate school at the University of Iowa (M.F.A., 1984); he also served in the U.S. Army (1960–63). He taught at various colleges and universities, in 1984 becoming a faculty member at Chicago State University. His poetry, written in Black dialect and slang, began to appear in the 1960s. His work is characterized both by anger at social and economic injustice and by rejoicing in African American culture. The verse collection Don’t Cry, Scream (1969) includes an introduction by poet Gwendolyn Brooks. Lee’s poetry readings were extremely popular during that time.

In 1967 Lee founded, with Carolyn M. Rodgers and Jewel C. Latimore (later known as Johari Amini), an African American publishing outlet called Third World Press, and in 1969 he established the Institute of Positive Education, a community resource in Chicago that eventually oversaw two schools for Black children. Among his poetry collections published under the Swahili name Haki R. Madhubuti are Book of Life (1973), Killing Memory, Seeking Ancestors (1987), and GroundWork (1996). He also wrote several nonfiction works about African American social issues, including From Plan to Planet—Life Studies: The Need for Afrikan Minds and Institutions (1973), Black Men: Obsolete, Single, Dangerous?: Afrikan American Families in Transition: Essays in Discovery, Solution, and Hope (1990), and Tough Notes: A Healing Call for Creating Exceptional Black Men: Affirmations, Meditations, Readings, and Strategies (2002). The memoir YellowBlack: The First Twenty-One Years of a Poet’s Life was published in 2005.

Illustration of "The Lamb" from "Songs of Innocence" by William Blake, 1879. poem; poetry

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Black Arts movement

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Black Arts movement

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Date:: 1960 - 1975

Key People:: Amiri Baraka; Toni Morrison; Ishmael Reed; Sonia Sanchez; Ntozake Shange

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Black Arts movement, period of artistic and literary development among Black Americans in the 1960s and early ’70s. The movement encompassed literature, music, theater, music, and the visual arts.

Based on the cultural politics of Black nationalism, which were developed into a set of theories referred to as the Black Aesthetic, the movement sought to create a populist art form to promote the idea of Black separatism. Many adherents viewed the artist as an activist responsible for the formation of racially separate publishing houses, theater troupes, and study groups. The literature of the movement, generally written in Black English vernacular and confrontational in tone, addressed such issues as interracial tension, sociopolitical awareness, and the relevance of African history and culture to Black people in the United States. (For a more-detailed account of the role of literature within the Black Arts movement, see African American literature.)

Leading theorists of the Black Arts movement included Houston A. Baker, Jr.; Carolyn M. Rodgers; Addison Gayle, Jr., editor of the anthology The Black Aesthetic (1971); Hoyt W. Fuller, editor of the journal Negro Digest (which became Black World in 1970); and LeRoi Jones and Larry Neal, editors of Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing (1968). Jones, later known as Amiri Baraka, wrote the critically acclaimed play Dutchman (1964) and founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre in Harlem (1965). Haki R. Madhubuti, known as Don L. Lee until 1973, became one of the movement’s most popular writers with the publication of Think Black (1967) and Black Pride (1968).