The Black Power Movement of the 1960s and 1970s - a movement for the empowerment of the African-Americans in the United States also ushered in the formulation of a new paradigm of ‘cultural nationalism’ in arts. The black artists adopted a language of radicalism which was a conscious strategic orientation to constitute a community. In trying to formulate a new paradigm for arts, the black artists experimented with new vocabularies, images, and perspectives which were sometimes drawn from their African heritage. Don L Lee’s (Haki Madhubuti) poem “The Primitive” employs a language that subverts the whole Euro-American concept of ‘whiteness’ and ‘civilization’. Amiri Baraka’s (LeRoi Jones) poem “SOS”, in the nature of an SOS call, employs the rhetorical device of ‘signifyin’ which means ‘to hint, to put on an act, boast, make a gesture.’ This paper discusses how this new aesthetic of the black arts debunked the western paradigm of ‘art for art’s sake.’ Poetry of the Black Arts Movement was an important tool for registering protest and creating social awareness among the black masses. It emphasized the functional aspect of art. Amiri Baraka’s (LeRoi Jones) iconic poem “Black Art” is a concrete manifestation of this radical aesthetic. One of the radical contributions of this Movement was the identification of literature with identity.