- 5 In Our Lives We Are Whole:
The Images of Everyday Life
This section examines the function of visual culture in the waning years of the modern movement. As local segregation laws were struck down in the 1960s and 1970s and African Americans were enjoying varying levels of enfranchisement across the nation, cultural figures—black and white—came to rethink the imagery of blackness. Their work not only reflected new views about race but also helped modify and improve old ones.
If mainstream popular culture continued to offer a partial, fragmentary, or distorted view of the black experience—a problem that continues today—it was the goal of imagery produced by and for African Americans to represent the full complexity and humanity of a people, to make visible what had remained mostly unseen in the culture at large.
During this period, the Black Arts Movement was born, organized exclusively by African American cultural figures and devoted to celebrating black life and culture. Independent African American cultural locales and institutions emerged, including theater companies, museums, and publishers. And black entertainers, producers, and directors advocated for a greater presence in Hollywood and for more complex and human characters.
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