Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka is a prolific writer, an acclaimed playwright, and a militant political activist. He was key in the formation of the progressive Black Arts Movement in the mid-1960s and mid-1970s. His 1964 Obie Award-winning play Dutchman dramatically and powerfully examines race relations in America. In 2001, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Letters. He also received the James Weldon Johnson medal for his contributions to the arts.

Baraka was born Everett Leroy (later LeRoi) Jones on October 7, 1934, in Newark, New Jersey. His father was a postal supervisor and lift operator; his mother was a social worker. Jones attended Rutgers, Howard and Columbia universities for various periods of time without getting a degree. He finally enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1954, where rose to the rank of sergeant. But he was discharged when an anonymous letter to his commanding officer led to his superiors finding out that he read leftist literature.

Jones then moved to Greenwich Village and landed a job in a music/records warehouse where he cultivated an interest in jazz. In 1958, Jones opened Totem Press, which published works by such major cultural icons of the period as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsburg. Jones also married Helen Cohen and the two became joint editors of Yugen literary magazine, which lasted until 1963.

Jones’s perspective took a more political slant after he visited Cuba in 1960. But whatever venue he chose to express himself, he continued to move forward. In 1961, Jones published Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note. Two years later, he penned Blues People: Negro Music in White America. This was one of the first books to examine the development of African-American music, and it became one of the country’s most influential books of jazz criticism. His plays Dutchman and The Slave were both produced in 1964. His one-act play Slave Ship opened in 1967, and may be remembered for its avant-garde staging.

Jones was deeply impacted by Malcolm X’s assassination in 1965. He became what he called a black cultural nationalist. A month after Malcolm’s death, he left his family and moved to Harlem and founded the short-lived Black Arts Repertory Theater/School. In 1967, he married poet Sylvia Robinson who later changed her name to Amina. In 1968, he wrote Black Music, a compilation of previously published music essays.

At the time, his forays into political activism became even more pronounced. From 1968 to1975, Baraka headed the black Committee for United Newark. During this period, he also founded the Congress of African People, a Pan-Africanist group that grew to have affiliates in 15 cities. Baraka backed Kenneth Gibson’s successful bid to become the first black mayor of Newark in 1970; and he also played a major role in putting together the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana, in 1971

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In 1983, he and Amina edited Confirmation: An Anthology of African-American Women, which won the American Book Award. Four years later, the couple published The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues. From 2002 to 2003, he was appointed Poet Laureate for the state of New Jersey. Baraka is the author of more than 40 works of poetry, political essays and short fiction, including Somebody Blew Up America & Other Poems and Tales of the Out & the Gone, a winner of the 2008 PEN/Beyond Margins Award.

In 2002, the Afrocentrist scholar Molefi Kete Asante named Baraka as one of the 100 Greatest African-Americans.