Just when I thought the milieu of emptiness
Was at the end of its patience
They violate this material and it is only a body
It does not have the principle of its movement in itself

The roots of the ’60s Black Arts Movement lie in the same period of urban transformation that encompassed urban renewal and the rise and fall of the earlier bohemia. Hundreds of thousands of Black migrants from the south arrived in several waves before and after World War II — and until 1948, racist restrictive housing covenants and other forms of discrimination kept them concentrated in a South Side “Black Belt” and a West Side ghetto where homes were subdivided and increasingly unlivable.

"I asked Mohammed if I could interview him. He refused and gave three reasons why: first, he didn’t like cameras (though I didn’t have one); second, 'I like to be mysterious;' and third, no one would listen if he told his story."