Recently, University of Houston Libraries hosted an opening reception for the new exhibit “Black Ink: The Black Arts Movement in Print.” Rare Books curator Julie Grob selected materials from UH Special Collections’ significant holdings of poetry and other writing published during the Black Arts Movement period of the 1960s and 70s. A few of the writers featured are Amiri Baraka, Toni Cade Bambara, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, and Ntozake Shange. The exhibit also includes examples from the Black-owned publishers Broadside Press of Detroit and the Third World Press of Chicago.

The community engagement event held at the Elizabeth D. Rockwell Pavilion included poetry readings from three graduate students in the UH Creative Writing Program. Abby Mengesha, Anthony Sutton, and El Williams III shared poetry from writers of the Black Arts Movement along with their own works.

Sutton wrote the following introduction to the exhibit:

This mid-twentieth century movement in literature, music, and art coincided with cultural shifts in the post-World War Two United States, including the Civil Rights movement and the Cold War. Through the Black Arts Movement, experimental literary sensibilities emerging at the time met the politics of the Black Panthers.

While some members of this grouping, such as Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka, and Gwendolyn Brooks, achieved mainstream recognition, this movement largely made use of underground and alternative venues such as the Black Arts Repertory Theater and School in Harlem for works to be performed. Print materials from the Black Arts Movement show the DIY publishing possible with a machine called the mimeograph which allowed the production of large volumes of magazines and books quickly and affordably.

The Black Arts Movement was also a nation-wide movement with not only New York City being a hotspot but also significant publishing activity in the Midwest with Broadside Press in Detroit and Third World Press in Chicago. In 2025 Third World Press received the Toni Morrison Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle. The Black Arts Movement eventually reached Houston through Lorenzo Thomas who served as Writer-in-Residence at Texas Southern University and later as faculty at UH-Downtown.

Visitors are invited to experience the exhibit, located at MD Anderson Library floor 2, through May 2026.