Umbra poets
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Umbra was a collective of young Black writers based in Manhattan's Lower East Side founded in 1962. Major members included the following writers:
- Steve Cannon
- Tom Dent
- Al Haynes
- David Henderson
- Calvin C. Hernton
- Joe Johnson
- Norman Pritchard
- Lenox Raphael
- Ishmael Reed
- Lorenzo Thomas
- James Thompson
- Askia M. Touré (Roland Snellings; also a visual artist),
- Brenda Walcott
- Archie Shepp, musician-writer
Touré, a major shaper of "cultural nationalism," directly influenced Jones, along with Umbra writer Charles Patterson and Charles's brother, William Patterson, Touré joined Jones, Steve Young, and others at BARTS.
Umbra, which produced Umbra Magazine, was the first post-civil rights Black literary group to make an impact as radical in the sense of establishing their own voice distinct from, and sometimes at odds with, the prevailing white literary establishment. The attempt to merge a Black-oriented activist thrust with a primarily artistic orientation produced a classic split in Umbra between those who wanted to be activists and those who thought of themselves as primarily writers, though to some extent all members shared both views. Black writers have always had to face the issue of whether their work was primarily political or aesthetic. Moreover, Umbra itself had evolved out of similar circumstances: In 1960 a Black nationalist literary organization, On Guard for Freedom, had been founded on the Lower East Side by Calvin Hicks. Its members included Nannie and Walter Bowe, Harold Cruse (who was then working on Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, 1967), Tom Dent, Rosa Guy, Joe Johnson, LeRoi Jones, and Sarah Wright, among others. On Guard was active in a famous protest at the United Nations of the American-sponsored Bay of Pigs Cuban invasion and was active in support of the Congolese liberation leader Patrice Lumumba. From On Guard, Dent, Johnson, and Walcott along with Hernton, Henderson, and Touré established Umbra.
