‘A Love Supreme’ at CFAC captures cultural and political movements of the 60s and 70s

“A Love Supreme: Black Cultural Expression and Political Activism of the 1960s and 1970s,” at the Community Folk Art Center, celebrates cultural and political movements during a turbulent time, roughly from 1964 to 1975. 

Assembled and curated from the Special Collections Research Center at the Syracuse University Libraries, the exhibition focuses on artifacts documenting a range of political and cultural groups. Indeed, it displays poems, drawings and other artworks, a poster for Eldridge Cleaver’s 1968 presidential campaign, works written by students at Broadway Junior High in New York City, even a reel-to-reel recording of Gil Scott-Heron’s 1973 concert at SU. 

The exhibit’s curators, Caroline Charles, a Ph.D candidate in English, and Jessica Terry-Elliott, a Ph.D candidate in history, discuss the birth and growth of Black cultural organizations across the country. Thus, the show touches on “The Journal of Poetry” in San Francisco, small publishing houses such as Broadside Press in Detroit and Third World Press in Chicago, There’s also discussion of Africobra, a Chicago-based commune of Black visual artists. 

In the 1960s and 1970s, such groups had little financial support. Out of necessity, they were built from the ground up. For example, Third World Press started with a mimeograph machine and $400 saved up from poetry readings. The press went on to publish many books and is still viable today. “A Love Supreme” presents works of poetry such as Johari Amini’s “A Folk Fable for My People” and “2 Love Raps” by Carolyn M. Rodgers. 

In Detroit, Dudley Randall couldn’t find outlets for his writing. He founded Broadside Press and ran it out of his home. The CFAC exhibit displays “Betcha Ain’t: Poems from Attica,” edited by Celes Tisdale, and “Riot,” by the eminent poet Gwendolyn Brooks. Broadside is alive and well in 2023. 

Jeff Donaldson created an inside illustration, a frontispiece, for “Riot.” He was a co-founder of Africobra, a prominent artist in his own right, and an administrator at Howard University. The Everson Museum hosted a retrospective of his artworks and has several of his pieces in its permanent collection. 

In addition, the show references various activists and events. It presents a flyer about memorial events for Malcolm X in New York City, a reprint of an “Amsterdam News” article from September 18, 1971 summarizing a list of demands submitted by inmates at Attica State Prison, a photo taken in Syracuse on March 14, 1969, at 119 Euclid Ave. The image depicts a demonstration organized by members of the Student Afro-American Society. 

There’s also an illustration created by Emory Douglas for the back cover of a newspaper published by the Black Panther Party. His work portrays horrid living conditions and is titled “We Want Decent Housing Fit for Shelter of Human Beings.” 

And the show communicates fundamental rationales for the growth of Black cultural movements: the abject lack of representation of Black communities in mainstream media: the desire of poets, artists, playwrights, and other creators to produce art embracing those communities in all their complexity. 

So, “A Love Supreme” touches many bases. It presents Masood Ali-Wilbur Warren’s self-portrait as well as a bevy of his sketches portraying everyday Black citizens– people talking on the street, a woman sitting on a bench possibly waiting for a bus, a GI playing a tuba. 

A selection of drawings from the sketchbook of artist Jerry Wilson plays a similar role. Each drawing depicts a college student. 

Elsewhere, the exhibition presents other noteworthy artworks: “Adaka Believes in Spirits,” a linoleum print by Carole Bayard; a silkscreen-printed poster combining a fine illustration and Yoseno Akiko’s poem “A Moving-Mountain Day”; a large reproduction of Jacob Lawrence’s epic work “The Library.”

Finally, “A Love Supreme” provides ample room for poetry. In addition to books already mentioned in this article, the exhibit encompasses poetry by Sonia Sanchez and June Jordan, among others. 

In their curators’ statement, Charles and Terry-Elliott note that the exhibition’s title refers to John Coltrane’s 1964 album in which he utters the phrase “A Love Supreme” 19 times. They state that “our own call to ‘A Love Supreme’ is dedicated to the Black People who have been fighting, creating, living and improvising since our arrival in this hemisphere.”

The show comes to CFAC as a traveling exhibition; it first appeared at Bird Library, Syracuse University.

“A Love Supreme” is on display through December 15 at the Community Folk Art Center, 805 E. Genesee St. CFAC is open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and on Saturdays from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Admission is free.

CFAC is closed on holidays such as Thanksgiving. For more information, call 315-442-2230 or access CFAC@Syr.Edu. 

Carl Mellor covered visual arts for the Syracuse New Times from 1994 through 2019. He continues to write about exhibitions and artists in Central New York.