Neal is best known for several significant works in the BAM. He is noted for his work with Liberator Magazine, Black Theatre Magazine,Negro Digest and Black World and also for co-editing Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing, a collection of theory, poetry and prose by writers of the BAM, with Amiri Baraka.
Neal wrote two plays entitled, The Glorious Monster in the Bell of the Horn and In an Upstate Motel: A Morality Play. Neal's most important essays include "The Black Arts Movement" which he included in his book, Visions of a Liberated Future: Black Arts Movemment Writings in which he explains the specific concepts of the BAM, "Abdul's Avatar and the Sun Sister Song", and "And Shine Swam On". Neal is also known for his uncovering of Ed Bullins' plagiarism of Albert Camus' play The Just Assassins.
Holding true to the claim that Neal was a main figure in the BAM, he helped to establish several literary journals, and also worked with Baraka to open the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School (BART/S). He also lectured and taught at several colleges including Yale, Howard and Wesleyan.
Up until his death of a massive heart attack in 1981, Neal supplied the concepts for the foundation of the BAM. His essays and commentaries are numerous and extremely influential on the ideology of the BAM and the history of Black Art.
http://www.umich.edu/~eng499/people/neal.html