In the 1980s - at the height of Thatcherism and in the wake of civil unrest and rioting in a number of British cities - the Black Arts Movement burst onto the British art scene with breathtaking intensity, changing the nature and perception of British culture irreversibly. This volume presents a history of that movement.
""Shades of Black" is an invaluable text for anyone and everyone in diaspora studies, cultural studies, and comparative British and American studies and for historians and critics of visual art. It brings together a wide range of visual art with a superb collection of essays that set the historical and critical context for understanding one of the most vibrant moments in art history."--Hazel V. Carby, author of C"ultures in Babylon: Black Britain and African America"