Hoyt William Fuller collection

In a time of great change, turmoil and creativity, Hoyt Fuller's search for clarity and beauty was his special gift. His genius for detail and nuance is a source of continuing wisdom.

The Hoyt William Fuller Collection documents his activities as a writer, editor, activist and also reveals his tireless efforts as promoter, mentor and friend to the arts and the artist.

The collection spans a period roughly from the early 1940s to 1981. It is an important source on the development of the Black Arts Movement which Hoyt Fuller did much to encourage and define.

The Hoyt William Fuller Collection includes correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, phonograph records, slides, posters and more than 3000 books on the Black Experience. The many short stories, scripts, essays and lectures by Mr. Fuller will be of great interest to biographers.

The tribute "Remembering Hoyt," was taken from the memorial celebration of his life. It was chosen because we realized that remembering Hoyt is to remember Detroit, Dakar, College Park, Paris and Mallorca. Rembmering Hoyt affords the opportunity to examine in painful and joyful detail the Negro Press, Black Studies, Black Art, Africa, African American artists, poets, writers and thinkers.

"Remembering Hoyt" helps us to fulfill our obligation to honor that which is best in us and to pass it on to our progeny, the world.

Charles Freeney

Our best people leave us. They sicken and die. They leave us too early because much of our burden they bear. Because their commitment is tense and intense. Because their strength is measure but their love is not.

Hoyt Fuller was one of our best influences. His genius, his judgement, the efficient richness of his supervision--all have warmed and have magnificently corrected us. Because of his gift we are a little less wobbly in the wild wind.

Gwendolyn Brooks

The sudden death of Hoyt Fuller at the age of fifty-seven, the result of a heart attack in Atlanta, Georgia, the city to which he went in 1976 to establish an international journal of the black world called First World, came as a brutal shock to the many black writers, old and young, who had come to respect and even to take for granted his eloquent voice and elegant style.

Hoyt Fuller, already recognized as a talented writer and editor, went to Guinea in the early sixties to experience the "new" Africa, and while there came to recognize that the problems experienced by the latter were part and parcel of the larger dichotomy of color described so eloquently at the beginning of the century by W.E.B. Du Bois. With this realization, he accepted a little later the invitation of the publisher, John H. Johnson, to edit a revived Negro Digest from the Chicago headquarters of Johnson Publishing. In his hands, Negro Digest, later adopting the more accurate Black World, became a vibrant and vital journal of black Americans and black overseas opinion, of literary criticism and historical analysis and a major vehicle for short fiction and poetry.

A perceptible black arts movement came into being in the United States in the sixties as a parallel to the Civil Rights Movement and Hoyt's journal was recognized as its principal organ. His special interest in young writers led him to establish the Organization of Black American Culture (O.B.A.C.), a writers' workshop in Chicago from which emerged Don L. Lee (Haki Madhubuti), Carolyn Rodgers, Angela Jackson and many others. His concern with, and understanding of, the situation of black people as an interconnected one was a motive for travel and involvement with international cultural manifestations. He attended the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar and reported extensively on it. There, he forged firm ties with Alioune Diop among others. He served as vice-chairman of the United States Zonal Committee for F.E.S.T.A.C. He also served on the committee for, and participated in, the First and Second New World Festivals of the African Diaspora held in Brazil and in Haiti. He also attended the Pan-African Congress of Algiers and the Colloquium on Negritude in Dakar.

Hoyt Fuller's most distinctive and initially most controversial achievement was the launching of the concept of the "Black Aesthetic," a challenge taken up by Addison Gayle who published a book with that title. A bibliography of that concept has recently been compiled by Carolyn Fowler. Hoyt had reviewed the bibliography and accepted it as the first book-length work to issue for the First World Press.

In leaving Chicago for Atlanta, following the publisher's decision to close down Black World, Hoyt was giving form to an idea he had long been developing - that of founding a journal of the black world that fulfilled his own expectations, visual and entrepreneurial. The slow start of the journal and the necessity of changing it from a monthly to a quarterly and then to an even more occasional format were a great grief to him. Nevertheless, he remained optimistic both as to the journal's mission and to its prospects. His optimism seemed on the verge of being justified as he had just concluded an attractive publishing arrangement with the publishers of Black Collegian in New Orleans.

Late in 1980, on the occasion of the Black South Arts Conference in Atlanta, Hoyt had been genuinely touched by an outpouring of sentiment for First World expressed at a party held for it. Among the speakers were Andrew Young, Sterling Brown, Atlanta Police Commissioner Lee Brown and many others.

Hoyt died on May 11, 1981. On Saturday May 16, 1981, some of his friends participated in a program entitled "Remembering Hoyt." Among those speaking were James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Abena Joan Brown, Mari Evans, George Kent, Richard Long, Dudley Randall and Val Gray Ward...

Dr. Richard A. Long Atticus Haygood Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies Emory University Atlanta, Georgia

Originally, Council Contact was started to inform constituents about city affairs and related matters. I did not contemplate writing about personal relations and especially close friends. However, I recently lost a very dear friend an I think it is noteworthy that I write a passing note about memories of the man and his life.

It was a little over four years ago that I met Hoyt Fuller when he stopped by my law office to consult with me about a legal matter. We became friends over the years and he was the speech writer during my campaign for president of the Atlanta City Council. Because I did not fully know who he was until sometime later, I did not know at our first meeting about his work and his commitment to a better life for black Americans.

I subsequently learned that he was a native Atlantan, having received his early childhood education here in the city of Atlanta. He was an editor, a lecturer, teacher and great writer with a deep concentration in Black history.

He was a prolific writer, provoking an abundant intellectual growth among his peers. A local columnist, Roger Witherspoon, wrote, "...Hoyt W. Fuller was a premier promoter of literary and artistic development in the black American community." It can be said that Hoyt Fuller put forth a new thought process for black Americans.

Hoyt was a controversial personality and sometimes misunderstood to a great extent. One of my associates and I had a dispute over a recent letter which Hoyt wrote to the editor of the Atlanta Journal newspaper. I basically agreed with my colleague's observation, but defended Hoyt's right to express himself about an unpopular issue. True to form, Hoyt took the editor to task about not having an appreciation for the black perspective. He even accused the editor of being insensitive and not informed about the black experience.

Hoyt simply did not understand why black Americans had to wait for constitutionally guaranteed rights. He was impatient because he felt the system could simply enforce the law in an equitable manner and guarantee human rights for all people. Yet, he understood the system that produced the new rise of the Ku Klux Klan; the hanging death of a young black in Mobile, Alabama; the killing of young black men in Buffalo, New York; and the new conservatism in America. In fact, he believed blacks were losing precious rights gained in the 60's and he was openly hostile toward the Bakke decision because of its impact on the black movement.

Hoyt could not tolerate mediocrity. He felt black Americans needed to know about important issues, particularly third world politics. Most of his knowledge about the black experience came from personal experiences gained in Africa and other foreign countries. Where there was no personal experience, there were books and other publications at his fingertips. His living room had a touch of a public library. You knew instantly upon entering his home that he was a student and a teacher of the black experience.

Hoyt was also strong, committed to an idea and principle. He was understanding, concerned, sensitive and involved. He was a total man and a good friend and I shall miss him.

Although Hoyt will not be around to give me counsel and advice, he had a profound impact on my life and I am sure I matured both professionally and spiritually from our friendship.

Hoyt's death is a great loss to the black community and indeed the world, and he will be sorely missed.

Farewell to a good friend,

Marvin S. Arrington Council Contact, City of Atlanta 1981