Baltimore’s Black Arts Then & Now brings to life the Chicory Revitalization Project, a public humanities initiative that revives Baltimore’s historic Chicory magazine. From 1966 to 1983, Chicory served as a powerful voice for working-class Black communities, capturing their thoughts, struggles, and dreams through unedited poetry and street chatter. Dubbed “the most authentic microphone of black folks talking ever devised” by the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper, Chicory emerged from the liberalism of the War on Poverty and the militance of the Black Arts Movement.
Since 2017, a group of former Chicory editors, scholars, librarians, poets, teachers, and young writers have collaborated to use Chicory as a catalyst for intergenerational dialogue on social justice, race, and place. Baltimore’s Black Arts Then & Now documents this joint effort, offering valuable insights for public historians, educators, and humanists.
“A model for a new kind of scholarship. . . . This is the rare volume that is equally as useful for specialists as it is for broader audiences.”—Roopika Risam, coeditor, Anti-Racist Community Engagement: Principles and Practices
“This book is desperately needed. Mary Rizzo and her colleagues provide a powerful counter to a trend within university hiring practices. They have turned over those shiny stones, allowing us to look closely at the life underneath them. This book provides the best and most transparent view of public history processes and outcomes that I have ever seen. Here, we see success and failure, conflict and resolution, negotiation and decision-making all as ongoing within an active project.”—Denise D. Meringolo, editor, Radical Roots: Public History and a Tradition of Social Justice Activism
“Dr. Mary Rizzo and the Chicory Revitalization Project invite readers into an indelible example of Black community and collective artmaking, centered on the journal Chicory, that also represents a vital intervention in the intellectual and cultural life of Baltimore and the surrounding region. As this brilliant gathering shows, Chicoryand the Chicory Revitalization Project represent artmaking as creation, self-realization, activism, education, transformation, and praxis, and provide an invaluable model for artists seeking to speak to the pressing concerns of today and every day.”—John Keene, author, Punks: New & Selected Poems
