A Local Construction Site

Abstract

This chapter provides an institutional history of the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), one of the most renowned African American artist collectives of the Black Arts movement. It recounts OBAC’s efforts to challenge Chicago’s established racial order and to reorient Black Chicago’s relationship to artistic production. It argues that OBAC pioneered several community-centered projects that served as hallmark modes of artistic practice within the movement while simultaneously helping to popularize the era’s burgeoning ideas. The group made Chicago an important epicenter of movement activity, attracting artists, activists, and intellectuals from around the world. At their peak, OBAC sparked a national intellectual debate over their creative philosophy of “a black aesthetic,” effectively polarizing arts discourse as it related to African Americans. Their growing popularity and heightened national profile generated a number of internal challenges, including intractable ideological and class contradictions, and tensions between individual professional aspirations and collective community engagement.