Chicago was a dynamic hub in all of this during the late 1960s throughout the 1970s. It offered a youthful Prof. Onli the space and place to percolate the eventual birth of the growing Black Age of Comics. Onli had founded "B.A.G.: The Black Arts Guild" in 1970 to facilitate the transition from talented art student into lifelong professional artist to fill the void in not only the Black Arts Movement but also the curriculum in art schools in that era. B.A.M was committed to protest images and narratives about selected approved historical moments and personalities. While art schools were detached from career and commerce opportunities.
Both shared the view of one wanting to become a career earning professional artist as being some type of "sell out" or "less than real" artist.
Prof. Turtel Onli is a rare example of an artist who came of age amidst the opulence of the Black age Movement who is still extremely active today. As evident in his prolifitc Rhythmistic Future-Primitif artistic practices and the launch and continued advocacy or the Black Age of Comics as an open genre of creativity, culture and commerce.
Onli directed B.A.G. until 1978 and founded the Black Age of Comics in 1993.
