DESCRIPTION
Founded in 1972 by elusive, visionary editor, Jamaican-born Rudolph "Rudy" Murray - and his literary alter ego, M. Lacovia. Murray, Black Images: A Critical Quarterly of Black Arts and Culture was seminal in the development of Black Canadian culture. While early issues combined coverage of Toronto's Black arts scene with reactionary polemics and theoretical expositions on pan-African culture, the launch of the second volume in 1973 heralded a break with racial nationalism and an attempt to chart an often more scholarly and more diverse, pluralistic, and complex set of aesthetic and formal lineages of black literature. This shift was reflected in the publication's design which moved from conceptually bold experimentations towards more a standard and readable digest format.
Through these changes at Black Images, Rudy Murray remained a constant, though perhaps paradoxically, anomalous, figure. For reasons unknown, Murray adopted the pen name R.M. Lacovia and in the brief period of Black Images existence, writing as Lacovia, produced a body of writing that is astonishing in its breadth and original in its approach, yet remains practically unknown today. Murray contributed to almost every issue of Black Images until its closure in 1975, at which time he apparently stopped writing altogether.
Despite its short life span and continued obscurity, Black Images remains the most audacious and smart Black journal to have emerged from the white north.
COMMENT: 17 February 2010 by Fragano Ledgister: Lacovia is a village in Jamaica where Murray spent time in his childhood.
PEOPLE
Rudolph Murray, R.M. Lacovia, Lennox Brown (1934-2003), Jojo Chintoh, Loften Mitchell (1919-2001), Keith Jeffers, Russell Keith, Frederick Ivor Case (1940-2008), Robert A. Hill, J. Michael Dash, Vere W. Knight, Merle Hodge, Ramabai Espinet, James G. Spady, Samuel O. Asein, Femi Ojo-Ade, Ihechukwu Madubuike, Cliff Lashley, Alberto O. Cappas, Abdulazis Sachedina, Abdias do Nascimento, Lazarus Ekwueme, Roger McTair, Lyndon Harries, Keith Q. Warner, E. Anthony Hurley
FAMILY TREE
- The Dawn of Tomorrow
- The Canadian Negro
- Cotopaxi
- Transition
- Spear
- Contrast
- The Harriet Tubman Review
- Kola
- At the Crossroads
- Small Axe
- New Dawn: A Journal of Black Canadian Studies
RE/SOURCES
- George Elliot Clarke, "A Primer of African-Canadian Literature," Books In Canada. 25.2 (March, 1996): 5-7
- Robin W. Winks, "Source of Strength?: The Press," The Blacks in Canada: A History, 2nd Edition (Montreal: McGill Queen's University Press, 1997), 390-412
CREDITS
Research and writing by Peter James Hudson
