In the 1960s and 1970s, Black is Beautiful became a watchword and a movement for African Americans who sought to dispel centuries of notions of Black inferiority. Central to Black is Beautiful is the corporeal connection to Africa that promoted Afrocentricity. In other words, Black people’s hair textures and skin colors were their physical connection to Africa. Black people sought to highlight the inherent beauty of their African-descended features. Therefore, Afro hairstyles, as well as cornrows, became popular. Black people also wore dashikis and pursued tangible connections to their African past and heritage.
The coincident rise of Black is Beautiful with such political gains as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was not a matter of chance. As Black people integrated into US institutions, they faced a decision about whether to culturally assimilate or retain their cultural singularity. Many Black people rejected assimilation and named their children Islamic names. The holiday of Kwanzaa, which Dr. Maulana Karenga created in 1966, was and remains a celebration of this singularity, rooted in African cosmologies. Integration into educational institutions exposed Eurocentric curricula, which displeased Black students. African American Studies emerged as a response to Black students’ protests for more inclusive curricula.
![A lithographic print juxtaposing two black faces stylized as African masks framed by yellow circular emblems with a black panther in the center. The words [BLACK IS / BEAUTIFUL] are inscribed around each panther. The print appears in quadrants, with one face in three-quarter view in the top left and the other face appearing straight on in the lower left. The panther emblems appear in a grid in the top right and bottom left quadrants, with the top and bottom rows extending across the full print.](/sites/default/files/styles/wide/public/2025-04/Elizabeth%20Catlett%2C%20Negro%20es%20Bello%20II%2C%201969..jpg?itok=w8UKWlcw)
Elizabeth Catlett, Negro es Bello II, 1969. Printed 2001. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. © 2025 Mora-Catlett Family / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.
The art of this period celebrated Blackness and promoted alternative ways of knowing. This provided an alternative to Eurocentric understandings of the world. Betye Saar’s Black Girl’s Window (1969) conveyed the ethos of Black is Beautiful with an emphatically Black figure at its center. A window frames the girl, and she peers through it wistfully. The panes of the window above her hold various signs and symbols. This imagery was related to Saar’s personal history and astrology. The girl’s palms face the viewer and Saar covered them in symbols that foretell her future. In Black Girl’s Window, Saar conveyed her belief that Black is Beautiful. Negro es Bello, made the same year by Elizabeth Catlett, was another powerful statement about the beauty of Blackness. It emphasized the political imperatives of the movement with its allusions to the Black Panther Party, a group that sought to politically, economically, and socially enfranchise Black people. In the lithograph, Catlett depicted two faces framed by the symbol of the Black Panther Party featuring the phrase “Black is Beautiful.” In both Saar’s and Catlett’s work, we see that Black is Beautiful transcended aesthetics to communicate a way of being and a way of knowing.
Toni Morrison insisted that “Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.” She made this statement in the afterword of her novel The Bluest Eye, which was published in 1970, the period in which Black is Beautiful was fomenting. The novel’s protagonist, Pecola Breedlove, goes insane in her desire for blue eyes after tragically giving birth to her father’s child. Racial self-loathing and a deep belief in her own ugliness tormented Pecola. She believed blue eyes would give her a better life, a relief from the abject poverty and degradation of the Breedlove household. The desire for blue eyes was not only an aesthetic longing, but also a longing for the ease of life Pecola thought whiteness could bring. The beauty Pecola associated with blue eyes was not just a physical attribute. It was a way of being in the world. Pecola’s insanity stemmed from her belief that Black was ugly. In a way, The Bluest Eye is a statement about the perils of believing in the ugliness of Blackness. It examines the ways in which that belief can degrade one’s psyche. Had she believed Black is beautiful, perhaps she could have survived. Thus, for its adherents in the 1960s and 1970s, Black is Beautiful was not just a matter of aesthetics, but a matter of survival.
Source: Elizabeth Carmel Hamilton is an assistant professor of visual and performing arts at Fort Valley State University. She is the author of Charting the Afrofuturist Imaginary in African American Art (2023), which won the Wyeth Foundation for American Art Publication Grant.