On February 4, 2021, Doc Chatters took a close look at a short-lived but influential periodical, Black Dialogue, and the important role it played in fostering political debate and creative expression in the 1960s and 1970s. 

A weekly series from NYPL's Center for Research in the Humanities, Doc Chat pairs a NYPL curator or specialist and a scholar to discuss evocative digitized items from the Library's collections and brainstorm innovative ways of teaching with them. In Episode Fourteen, NYPL's Julie Golia and Amaka Okechukwu, professor of sociology at George Mason University, analyze excerpts from Black Dialogue using the open-access database Independent Voices, and discuss the historical context in which the magazine was written, published, and circulated.

A transcript of this event is available here.

Be sure to check out Amaka Okechukwu's first book, To Fulfill These Rights: Political Struggle over Affirmative Action and Open Admissions (2019).

Below are some handy links to materials and sources suggested in the episode. 

Episode Fourteen: Primary Sources

Julie and Amaka used the NYPL-supported open access database Independent Voices to explore three different issues of Black Dialogue. The featured issues were: 

Volume 1, Issue 1 (1965)

Volume 4, Issue 1 (Spring 1969)

Volume 4, issue 2 (Summer 1970)

Episode Fourteen: Readings and Resources 

John H. Bracey Jr., Sonia Sanchez, and James Smethurst, eds, SOS - Calling All Black People: A Black Arts Movement Reader (University of Massachusetts Press, 2014). 

Cheryl Clarke, "After Mecca": Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement (Rutgers University Press, 2005).

Kim Gallon, "Silences Kept: The Absence of Gender and Sexuality in Black Press Historiography" History Compass 10:2 (February 2012), 207-218.

Wadsworth Jarrell,  AFRICOBRA: Experimental Art Toward a School of Thought (Duke University Press, 2020). 

"May 1969: Jim Forman Delivers Black Manifesto at Riverside Church," SNCC Digital Gateway.

Amaka Okechukwu, "Black Belt Brooklyn: Mapping Community Building and Social Life during the Urban Crisis," (2020).

Christopher Tinson, "Remembering the Radical Black Press," Black Perspectives, January 25, 2018.

Join the Doc Chat Conversation

Doc Chat's Spring 2021 season is just warming up! Episodes take place on Zoom every Thursday at 3:30 PM.  Over the next several months, we are covering a range of topics: colonialism in the 17th-century Americas, the origins of wildlife protection in the US, Zine-making,  the history of New York City tenements, Russian propaganda posters, and much more.

Check out upcoming episodes on NYPL's calendar,  and make sure you don't miss an episode by signing up for NYPL's Research newsletter, which will include links to register. A video of each episode will be posted on the Research Channel of the NYPL blog shortly after the program. There you can also explore videos and resources for past episodes. See you at the next Doc Chat!