Organization of Black American Culture

The Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC) was conceived during the era of the Civil Rights Movement by Hoyt W. Fuller as a collective of African-American writers, artists, historians, educators, intellectuals, community activists, and others. Founded on Southside Chicago in May 1967 by a group of Black intellectuals that included Fuller (editor of Negro Digest), the poet Conrad Kent Rivers, and Gerald McWorter (later Abdul Alkalimat), OBAC aimed to coordinate artistic support in the struggle for freedom, justice and equality of opportunity for African Americans. The organization had workshops for visual arts, theater, and writing, and produced two publications: a newsletter, Cumbaya, and the magazine Nommo.

Among those associated at various times with the OBAC Writers Workshop are founding member Don L. Lee (now Haki Madhubuti), Carolyn Rodgers, Angela Jackson, Sterling Plumpp, Sam Greenlee, Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Johari Amini, D. L. Crockett-Smith, Cecil Brown, Sandra Jackson-Opoku, and other writers of national stature.

The Theater Workshop eventually led to the first black theater in Chicago, Kuumba Theater.

Members of the OBAC Visual Workshop produced a mural dedicated to African-American heroes such as Muhammad Ali, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Malcolm X, known as the Wall of Respect. The artists involved included William Walker, Wadsworth Jarrell and Jeff Donaldson, who has written of the collective's determination to produce a "collaborative work as a contribution to the community". Donaldson went on to found the Coalition of Black Revolutionary Artists (COBRA), later renamed the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists (AfriCOBRA) in support of Pan-Africanism.

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