Art and Activism: Jazz Artists and Writers in the Civil Rights Vanguard

Art and Activism explores the powerful, symbiotic relationships among artists such as Nina Simone, Abbey Lincoln and Lena Horne and their literary counterparts, Lorraine Hansberry, Maya Angelou and Langston Hughes. These creative figures positioned themselves as cultural thought leaders within the evolving civil rights movement. While the Jim Crow South was the movement’s operational front, the book advances the argument that New York City’s intellectual, cultural and fundraising communities functioned as the movement’s strategic command center.