In the sixties and seventies, activism and art joined forces more blatantly than ever when the poets of the Black Arts Movement created a body of work that sprang full-grown from their African folk roots. With an aesthetic defined by use of the harsh vernacular of the inner city streets, the primacy of musicality, spontaneous improvisation, and social commentary, the Black Arts Movement poets continued the legacy of protest and resistance passed down by the makers of the spirituals.

The poetic parents of today's rap artists, the founding poets of the Black Arts Movement once again reclaimed the black idiom as poetic speech, and not only reasserted that the day-to-day emotional and political struggles of Black Americans were viable poetic topics, but even insisted that this was the only well from which African American artists should legitimately draw. "The Black Arts Movement is radically opposed to any concept of the artist that alienates him from his community," asserts poet/critic Larry Neal. "It envisions an art that speaks directly to the needs and aspirations of Black America." That is, if you are an artist and you are Black, then you are a Black Artist and your art should be for and about Blackness and Black people. This is an interesting parallel to the African need to produce a functional music based on daily activities and the events of the Sasa. Like the music of Africa and the spirituals, the poetics of the Black Arts Movement were functional as well as esthetic.