In 1970 Amiri Baraka gave readers something to look at. It had been about a year since he started to go by Imamu Amiri (or Ameer) Baraka, indicating his commitment to Maulana Karenga’s brand of cultural nationalism. His collected poems and plays had been published in 1969, but these books appeared under his birth name, (Everett) LeRoi Jones. Now Baraka was ready to publish under his revolutionary name, and thereby put nationalist aesthetics into practice as the widely recognized figurehead of the Black Arts Movement (BAM). With Chicago’s Third World Press, he brought out the aptly titled chapbook It’ s Nation Time (1970). Owned and operated by fellow nationalist Haki R. Madhubuti, Third World was a natural fit for Baraka’s new identity. But then there was the company that had been responsible for his two collections from 1969. Based in Indianapolis, Indiana, Bobbs-Merrill was best known as the publisher of Ayn Rand’ s The Fountainhead (1943) and Irma Rombauer’s The Joy of Cooking (1931). In summer 1970, the firm’s lone Black editor, Walter M. Myers (who, as Walter Dean Myers, became a bestselling children’ s author), announced that Bobbs-Merrill would be publishing a “beautiful black book,” the outcome of a collaboration between Baraka and Chicago photographer Fundi (Billy Abernathy). It was titled In Our Terribleness (Some Elements and Meaning in Black Style). A hybrid photo-essay, poetry collection, and manifesto, the book was notable as much for its design as for its politics.
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