I have met few people that I would take the time to write a book about. The late Sam Greenlee is one, and Curtis King, the creator of The Black Academy of Arts and Letters, is the second. I worked at TBAAL for just over two years and during that time create one of the largest black cultural arts achives in Texas history - by myself. Curtis King had done so many things, sponsored so much and created so much, that it took that long to catalogue his accomplishments and build the 12-foot shelves in the lower level of TBAAL, located across the street from Dallas City Hall. I therefore have important knowledge of the work that King put in to create this veritable empire and the thousands of people whose lives he's touched. This book attempts to document his struggles and triumphs. It started before King was born with an organization called the American Negro Academy, with the likes of Alexander Crummel and even W.E.B. DuBois as active members. Curtis King found much of what was left behind thrown out in dumpsters. He recycled it and almost single handed rekindled the historical spirt that the ANA had sought to create. Prior to that, on March of 1969, a "Black Academy of Arts and Letters (BAAL)" was founded and was chartered and incorporated as a non-profit, tax-exempt organization by the State of New York on June 12, 1969. C. Eric Lincoln was president; John O. Killens, vice president; Doris Saunders, secretary; Alvin F. Poussaint, treasurer; and Julia Prettyman, executive director. Charles V. Hamilton, Vincent Harding, Robert Hooks, Charles White and John A. Williams were other Board Members. According to Minutaglio (1984) in the early '70s, King attended a Chicago meeting of the reborn Black Academy. His teacher, Margaret Walker, was invited as a guest speaker, and King accompanied her as a student intern. He was but 19 at the time, and it was the young King's goal to be voted a member of the Black Academy by virtue of his artistic accomplishments. As Taitte (2006) records it, "As other star-struck young people eagerly collected autographs, Mr. King went around asking for addresses. When he got home, he wrote each of those people a personal letter. "I still have that green address book from 1972," he says. It's a lot closer to full now. And he uses it. The idea stayed with him through his move from Mississippi to graduate work in Texas to a job as professor of theater at Charlotte University in Raleigh, North Carolina." After Curtis King had conversed with C. Eric Lincoln, John O. Killens, Margaret Walker Alexander, Frederick O'Neal, Jean Hutson, Romare Bearden and Doris Saunders concerning the formation of an Academy that would directly involve young and aspiring artists and scholars, JBAAL was founded and officially formed by Curtis King in Dallas, Texas on July 17, 1977 and chartered with the State of Texas on November 23, 1977. Since the early 1970s, when King came to Texas from Mississippi to work on his master's degree in theater at Texas Christian University, King's aim was to present and preserve all aspects of black arts. Armed with a stack of names, numbers and addresses - most of which he collected while a student and protege of Margaret Walker at Jackson State University - King began corresponding with major black artists. "I told them I wanted to put on a cultural arts festival in Texas. I wanted seminars and presentations of all different kinds," he says. Enough people took the bait, and in 1976, King and others ... staged the Sojourner Truth National Cultural Arts Festival (Minutaglio, 1984: p. 4E). The rest of the story is shared on the pages of this book. It is a blueprint for anyone who wants to create an institution that is real, rockstrong and long-lasting. My contribution to TBAAL goes without saying, but as an archivist it is good to present evidence of what you've done since people tend to forget or overlook it. This book will make sure that such actions will not take place.
About the Author: AUTHOR'S BIO Matthew C. Stelly is a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee working on a degree in Urban Education and Community Policy. He holds three Master's degrees: Urban Studies (1982), Urban Education (1983) and Political Science (2000). He is working toward his doctorate in Community Policy/Urban Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is the former editor of the Milwaukee Courier newspaper, former director of the Great Plains Black Museum and the Plano (TX) African American Museum, and lead archivist for The Black Academy of Arts and Letters (TBAAL) in Dallas, Texas. Stelly has more than 2,500 articles in print and has won two national essay competitions. He is the founding director of the largest African-American neighborhood group in Nebraska, the Triple One Neighborhood Association and Parents Union. He is publisher and editor of the Triple One News, a two-time nationally recognized newsletter. He is the father of five children - Mandla, Malik, Clariece, Charisse and Shannon -- and remains actively involved in community organizing and neighborhood development in several cities, including Milwaukee and Omaha.