Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School

Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School

A cornerstone of the Black Arts movement, the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School (BARTS) was founded by Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) in Harlem in 1965.  Provoked by the assassination of Malcolm X, Baraka envisioned a black artistic school responsive to the black community, attached to the militant politics of the Black Power movement, and rooted in the same urban landscape as the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.  Although BARTS operated for less than a year, it attracted artists of the talent of Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, and Sonia Sanchez, and inspired dozens of similar Black Arts incubators across the U.S., propagating the Black Arts movement into the 1970s.  The FBI kept a close watch on BARTS even before its official opening, with federal informers present at some of the school’s earliest meetings.  FBI spies attended BARTS’s summer education classes, sitting in on Harold Cruse’s groundbreaking Afro-American history course.  Baraka himself believed that the early break-up of BARTS was caused in part by FBI tampering.

BARTS Part 1

BARTS Part 2