In 1972, the LHCVPA hosted the traveling exhibition AfriCOBRA II. AfriCOBRA, short for the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists, was a Chicago-based collective of Black artists formed in 1968 who strived to develop a unified aesthetic to foster solidarity and self-confidence across the African diaspora as a tool for revolutionary change.[1] In a letter to AfriCOBRA co-founder Jeff Donaldson, executive director Allie Anderson credits the exhibition as being the first “all black art exhibition ever held in the entire history of the city.” The Six from the City exhibition in 1968 however, suggests that the founders themselves had been the first all-black art exhibition in the city, even if they did not see themselves in this revolutionary light at the time. 

AfriCOBRA was a prominent group to emerge out of the Black Arts Movement, a Black nationalism movement from the mid-1960s- mid-1970s characterized by its emphasis on self-determination, community, and culture, with artists and intellectuals reclaiming their own imagery and stories being put out in the world.^[2] A cultural complement to the Black Power Movement, these ideologies circulated across communities on a national and international scale. Spreading locally across college campuses with the formation of Black Student Unions and liberation fronts, these efforts spread into the community through grassroots organizations of cultural institutions like the Langston Hughes Center for the Visual and Performing Arts. Its founding was part of a wave of cultural institutions like the African American Cultural Center, the Center for Positive Thought, The Buffalo Black Drama Workshop, the Black Dance Workshop, and Ujima Theatre Company, among others, that represented a subtle, yet powerful organizational effort to make space for Black art during this profound social, political, and cultural moment. The AfriCOBRA exhibition serves as just one example of the presence of the Black Arts Movement right here in Buffalo.