Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka (born Everett Leroy Jones; October 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014), previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka, was an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays and music criticism. He was the author of numerous books of poetry and taught at several universities, including the University at Buffalo and Stony Brook University. He received the PEN/Beyond Margins Award in 2008 for ''Tales of the Out and the Gone''. Baraka's plays, poetry, and essays have been described by scholars as constituting defining texts for African-American culture.

Baraka's career spanned nearly 52 years, and his themes range from black liberation to white racism. His notable poems include "The Music: Reflection on Jazz and Blues", "The Book of Monk", and "New Music, New Poetry", works that draw on topics from the worlds of society, music, and literature.

Baraka's poetry and writing have attracted both high praise and condemnation. In the African-American community, some compare Baraka to James Baldwin and recognize him as one of the most respected and most widely published black writers of his generation,Salaam, Kaluma
"Historical Overviews of the Black Arts Movement"
in ''The Oxford Companion to African-American Literature''. Oxford University Press, 1997; see also Nelson, Cary (ed.) (2002). ''Modern American Poetry: An Online Journal and Multimedia Companion to Anthology of Modern American Poetry''. Champaign: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. though some have said his work is an expression of violence, misogyny, and homophobia.Watts, Jerry Gafio (2001). ''Amiri Baraka: The Politics and Art of a Black Intellectual''. New York: New York University Press. Baraka's brief tenure as Poet Laureate of New Jersey (in 2002 and 2003) involved controversy over a public reading of his poem "Somebody Blew Up America?", which resulted in accusations of antisemitism and negative attention from critics and politicians.

Biographical information

Early life (1934–1965)

Baraka was born in Newark, New Jersey, where he attended Barringer High School. His father Coyt Leroy Jones worked as a postal supervisor and lift operator. His mother Anna Lois (née Russ) was a social worker. Jazz was something Baraka became interested in as a kid. He wanted to be just like Miles Davis. "I wanted to look like that too — that green shirt and rolled up sleeves on '' Milestones''...always wanted to look like that. And be able to play " On Green Dolphin Street" or " Autumn Leaves" ... That gorgeous chilling sweet sound. That's the music you wanted playing when you was coming into a joint, or just looking up at the sky with your baby by your side, that mixture of America and them changes, them blue African magic chants." The influence of jazz can be seen throughout his work later in life.

He won a scholarship to Rutgers University in 1951 but transferred in 1952 to Howard University. His classes in philosophy and religious studies helped lay a foundation for his later writings. He subsequently studied at Columbia University and The New School without taking a degree.

In 1954, he joined the United States Air Force as a gunner, reaching the rank of sergeant. This was a decision he would come to regret. He once explained: "I found out what it was like to be under the direct jurisdiction of people who hated black people. I had never known that directly." This experience was yet another that influenced Baraka's later work. His commanding officer received an anonymous letter accusing Baraka of being a communist. This led to the discovery of Soviet writings in Baraka's possession, his reassignment to gardening duty, and subsequently a dishonorable discharge for violation of his oath of duty. He later described his experience in the military as "racist, degrading, and intellectually paralyzing". While he was stationed in Puerto Rico, he worked at the base library, which allowed him ample reading time, and it was here that, inspired by Beat poets back in the mainland US, he began to write poetry.

The same year, he moved to Greenwich Village, working initially in a warehouse of music records. His interest in jazz evolved during this period. It was also during this time that he came in contact with the avant-garde Black Mountain poets and New York School poets. In 1958 he married Hettie Cohen, with whom he had two daughters, Kellie Jones (b. 1959) and Lisa Jones (b.1961). He and Hettie founded Totem Press, which published such Beat poets as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. In cooperation with Corinth, Totem published books by LeRoi Jones and Diane di Prima, Ron Loewinsohn, Michael McClure, Charles Olson, Paul Blackburn, Frank O'Hara, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Ed Dorn, Joel Oppenheimer and Gilbert Sorrentino and an anthology of four young female poets, Carol Berge, Barbara Moraff, Rochelle Owens, and Diane Wakoski. They also jointly founded a quarterly literary magazine, ''Yugen'', which ran for eight issues (1958–62). Through a party that Baraka organized, Ginsberg was introduced to Langston Hughes while Ornette Coleman played saxophone.

Baraka also worked as editor and critic for the literary and arts journal '' Kulchur'' (1960–65). With Diane di Prima he edited the first twenty-five issues (1961–63) of their small magazine ''The Floating Bear''. In October 1961, the U.S. Postal Service seized ''The Floating Bear #9''; the FBI charged them for obscenity over William Burroughs' piece "Roosevelt after the Inauguration". In the autumn of 1961 he co-founded the New York Poets Theatre with di Prima, the choreographers Fred Herko and James Waring, and the actor Alan S. Marlowe. He had an extramarital affair with di Prima for several years; their daughter, Dominique di Prima, was born in June 1962.

Baraka visited Cuba in July 1960 with a Fair Play for Cuba Committee delegation and reported his impressions in his essay "Cuba Libre". There he encountered openly rebellious artists who declared him to be a "cowardly bourgeois individualist" more focused on building his reputation than trying to help those who were enduring oppression. This encounter led to a dramatic change in his writing and goals, causing him to become emphatic about supporting black nationalism.

In 1961 Baraka co-authored a "Declaration of Conscience" in support of Fidel Castro's regime. Baraka also was a member of the Umbra Poets Workshop of emerging Black Nationalist writers (Ishmael Reed and Lorenzo Thomas, among others) on the Lower East Side (1962–65).

His first book of poems, ''Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note,'' was published in 1961. Baraka's article "The Myth of a 'Negro Literature'" (1962) stated that "a Negro literature, to be a legitimate product of the Negro experience in America, must get at that experience in exactly the terms America has proposed for it in its most ruthless identity". He also stated in the same work that as an element of American culture, the Negro was entirely misunderstood by Americans. The reason for this misunderstanding and for the lack of black literature of merit was, according to Jones:

As long as black writers were obsessed with being an accepted middle class, Baraka wrote, they would never be able to speak their mind, and that would always lead to failure. Baraka felt that America only made room for white obfuscators, not black ones.Martin, Reginald (1995). "Historical Overviews of The Black Arts Movement", in ''The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States''. New York: Oxford University Press.

In 1963 Baraka (under the name LeRoi Jones) published '' Blues People: Negro Music in White America'', his account of the development of black music from slavery to contemporary jazz. When the work was re-issued in 1999, Baraka wrote in the Introduction that he wished to show that "The music was the score, the actually expressed creative orchestration, reflection of Afro-American life ... That the music was explaining the history as the history was explaining the music. And that both were expressions of and reflections of the people." He argued that though the slaves had brought their musical traditions from Africa, the blues were an expression of what black people became in America: "The way I have come to think about it, blues could not exist if the African captives had not become American captives."

Baraka (under the name LeRoi Jones) wrote an acclaimed, controversial play titled '' Dutchman'', in which a white woman accosts a black man on the New York City Subway. The play premiered in 1964 and received the Obie Award for Best American Play in the same year. A film of the play, directed by Anthony Harvey, was released in 1967. The play has been revived several times, including a 2013 production staged in the Russian and Turkish Bathhouse in the East Village, Manhattan.

After the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, Baraka changed his name from LeRoi Jones to Amiri Baraka. At this time, he also left his wife and their two children and moved to Harlem, where he founded the Black Arts Repertory/Theater School (BARTS) since the Black Arts Movement created a new visual representation of art. However, the Black Arts Repertory Theater School remained open for less than a year. In its short time BARTS attracted many well-known artists, including Sonia Sanchez, Sun Ra and Albert Ayler. The Black Arts Repertory Theater School's closure prompted conversation with many other black artists who wanted to create similar institutions. Consequently, there was a surge in the establishment of these institutions in many places across the United States. In December 1965 Baraka moved back to Newark after allegations surfaced that he was using federal antipoverty welfare funds for his theater.

Baraka became a leading advocate and theorist for the burgeoning black art during this time. Now a "black cultural nationalist", he broke away from the predominantly white Beats and became critical of the pacifist and integrationist Civil Rights Movement. His revolutionary poetry became more controversial. A poem such as "Black Art" (1965), according to Werner Sollors of Harvard University, expressed Baraka's need to commit the violence required to "establish a Black World".

Baraka even uses onomatopoeia in "Black Art" to express that need for violence: "rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ... tuhtuhtuhtuhtuhtuht..." More specifically, lines in "Black Art" such as "Let there be no love poems written / until love can exist freely and cleanly", juxtaposed with "We want a black poem. / And a Black World", demonstrate Baraka's cry for political justice during a time when racial injustice was rampant, despite the Civil Rights Movement.

"Black Art" quickly became the major poetic manifesto of the Black Arts Literary Movement, and in it, Jones declaimed, "we want poems that kill", which coincided with the rise of armed self-defense and slogans such as "Arm yourself or harm yourself" that promoted confrontation with the white power structure. Rather than use poetry as an escapist mechanism, Baraka saw poetry as a weapon of action.Harris, William J. (1985). ''The Poetry and Poetics of Amiri Baraka: The Jazz Aesthetic''. University of Missouri Press.

In April 1965, Baraka's "A Poem for Black Hearts" was published as a direct response to Malcolm X's assassination, and it further exemplifies the poet's uses of poetry to generate anger and endorse rage against oppression. Like many of his poems, it showed no remorse in its use of raw emotion to convey its message. It was published in the September issue of '' Negro Digest'' and was one of the first responses to Malcolm's death to be exposed to the public. The poem is directed particularly at black men, and it scoldingly labels them "faggots" in order to challenge them to act and continue the fallen activist's fight against the white establishment.

Baraka also promoted theatre as a training for the "real revolution" yet to come, with the arts being a way to forecast the future as he saw it. In "The Revolutionary Theatre", Baraka wrote, "We will scream and cry, murder, run through the streets in agony, if it means some soul will be moved." In opposition to the peaceful protests inspired by Martin Luther King Jr., Baraka believed that a physical uprising must follow the literary one.

Baraka's decision to leave Greenwich Village in 1965 was an outgrowth of his response to the debate about the future of black liberation.

1966–1980

In 1966, Baraka married his second wife, Sylvia Robinson, who later adopted the name Amina Baraka. The two would open a facility in Newark known as Spirit House, a combination playhouse and artists' residence. In 1967, he lectured at San Francisco State University. The year after, he was arrested in Newark for having allegedly carried an illegal weapon and resisting arrest during the 1967 Newark riots. He was subsequently sentenced to three years in prison. His poem "Black People", published in the ''Evergreen Review'' in December 1967, was read by the judge in court, including the memorable phrase: ''"All the stores will open if you say the magic words. The magic words are: "Up against the wall motherfucker this is a stick up!"'' Shortly afterward an appeals court reversed the sentence based on his defense by attorney Raymond A. Brown. He later joked that he was charged with holding "two revolvers and two poems".

Not long after the 1967 riots, Baraka generated controversy when he went on the radio with a Newark police captain and Anthony Imperiale, a politician and private business owner, and the three of them blamed the riots on "white-led, so-called radical groups" and "Communists and the Trotskyite persons". That same year his second book of jazz criticism, ''Black Music'', came out. It was a collection of previously published music journalism, including the seminal ''Apple Cores'' columns from '' Down Beat'' magazine. Around this time he also formed a record label called Jihad, which produced and issued only three LPs, all released in 1968: ''Sonny's Time Now'' with Sunny Murray, Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, Lewis Worrell, Henry Grimes, and Baraka; ''A Black Mass'', featuring Sun Ra; and ''Black & Beautiful – Soul & Madness'' by the Spirit House Movers, on which Baraka reads his poetry.

In 1967, Baraka (still LeRoi Jones) visited Maulana Karenga in Los Angeles and became an advocate of his philosophy of Kawaida, a multifaceted, categorized activist philosophy that produced the "Nguzo Saba", Kwanzaa, and an emphasis on African names. It was at this time that he adopted the name ''Imamu Amear Baraka''. ''Imamu'' is a Swahili title for "spiritual leader", derived from the Arabic word ''Imam'' (إمام). According to Shaw, he dropped the honorific ''Imamu'' and eventually changed ''Amear'' (which means "Prince") to ''Amiri''.
''Baraka'' means "blessing, in the sense of divine favor".

In 1970 he strongly supported Kenneth A. Gibson's candidacy for mayor of Newark; Gibson was elected as the city's first African-American mayor.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Baraka courted controversy by penning some strongly anti-Jewish poems and articles with a stance similar to the stance at that time of the Nation of Islam. Historian Melani McAlister points to an example of this writing: "In the case of Baraka, and in many of the pronouncements of the NOI ation of Islam there is a profound difference, both qualitative and quantitative, in the ways that white ethnicities were targeted. For example, in one well-known poem, ''Black Arts'' riginally published in ''The Liberator'' January 1966 Baraka made offhand remarks about several groups, commenting in the violent rhetoric that was often typical of him, that ideal poems would 'knockoff ... dope selling wops' and suggesting that cops should be killed and have their 'tongues pulled out and sent to Ireland.' But as Baraka himself later admitted n his piece ''I was an AntiSemite'' published by ''The Village Voice'' on December 20, 1980, vol. 1], he held a specific animosity for Jews, as was apparent in the different intensity and viciousness of his call in the same poem for 'dagger poems' to stab the 'slimy bellies of the ownerjews' and for poems that crack 'steel knuckles in a jewlady's mouth.'"

Prior to this time, Baraka prided himself on being a forceful advocate of black cultural nationalism; however, by the mid-1970s, he began finding its racial individuality confining. Baraka's separation from the Black Arts Movement began because he saw certain black writers – capitulationists, as he called them – countering the Black Arts Movement that he created. He believed that the groundbreakers in the Black Arts Movement were doing something that was new, needed, useful, and black, and those who did not want to see a promotion of black expression were "appointed" to the scene to damage the movement.

In 1974, Baraka distanced himself from Black nationalism, embracing Marxism-Leninism in the context of Maoist third-world liberation movements.

In 1979, he became a lecturer in the State University of New York at Stony Brook's Africana Studies Department in the College of Arts and Sciences at the behest of faculty member Leslie Owens. Articles about Baraka appeared in the University's print media from ''Stony Brook Press'', ''Blackworld'', and other student campus publications. These articles included a page-one exposé of his positions in the inaugural issue of ''Stony Brook Press'' on October 25, 1979, discussing his protests "against what he perceived as racism in the Africana Studies Department, as evidenced by a dearth of tenured professors". Shortly thereafter, Baraka took a tenure-track assistant professorship at Stony Brook in 1980 to assist "the struggling Africana Studies Department"; in 1983, he was promoted to associate professor and earned tenure.

In June 1979 Baraka was arrested and jailed at Eighth Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Different accounts emerged around the arrest, yet all sides agree that Baraka and his wife, Amina, were in their car arguing over the cost of their children's shoes. The police version of events holds that they were called to the scene after a report of an assault in progress. They maintain that Baraka was striking his wife, and when they moved to intervene, he attacked them as well, whereupon they used the necessary force to subdue him. Amina's account contrasted with that of the police; she held a news conference the day after the arrest accusing the police of lying. A grand jury dismissed the assault charge, but the resisting arrest charge moved forward. In November 1979 after a seven-day trial, a criminal court jury found Baraka guilty of resisting arrest. A month later he was sentenced to 90 days at Rikers Island (the maximum he could have been sentenced to was one year). Amina declared that her husband was "a political prisoner". Baraka was released after a day in custody pending his appeal. At the time it was noted that if he was kept in prison, "he would be unable to attend a reception at the White House in honor of American poets." Baraka's appeal continued up to the State Supreme Court. During the process his lawyer William M. Kunstler told the press Baraka "feels it's the responsibility of the writers of America to support him across the board". Backing for his attempts to have the sentence cancelled or reduced came from "letters of support from elected officials, artists and teachers around the country". Amina Baraka continued to advocate for her husband and at one press conference stated, "Fascism is coming and soon the secret police will shoot our children down in the streets." In December 1981 Judge Benrard Fried ruled against Baraka and ordered him to report to Rikers Island to serve his sentence on weekends occurring between January 9, 1982, and November 6, 1982. The judge noted that having Baraka serve his 90 days on weekends would allow him to continue his teaching obligations at Stony Brook. Rather than serve his sentence at the prison, Baraka was allowed to serve his 48 consecutive weekends in a Harlem halfway house. While serving his sentence he wrote ''The Autobiography'', tracing his life from birth to his conversion to socialism.

1980–2014

In 1980 Baraka published an essay in the '' Village Voice'' that was titled ''Confessions of a Former Anti-Semite''. Baraka insisted that a ''Village Voice'' editor titled it and not himself. In the essay Baraka went over his life history, including his marriage to Hettie Cohen, who was Jewish. He stated that after the assassination of Malcolm X he found himself thinking, "As a Black man married to a white woman, I began to feel estranged from her ... How could someone be married to the enemy?" He eventually divorced Hettie and left her with their two bi-racial daughters. In the essay Baraka went on to say

We also know that much of the vaunted Jewish support of Black civil rights organizations was in order to use them. Jews, finally, are white, and suffer from the same kind of white chauvinism that separates a great many whites from Black struggle. ... these Jewish intellectuals have been able to pass over into the Promised Land of American privilege.

In the essay he also defended his position against Israel, saying, "Zionism is a form of racism." Near the end of the essay Baraka stated the following:

Anti-Semitism is as ugly an idea and as deadly as white racism and Zionism ...As for my personal trek through the wasteland of anti-Semitism, it was momentary and never completely real. ... I have written only one poem that has definite aspects of anti-Semitism...and I have repudiated it as thoroughly as I can.

The poem Baraka referenced was "For Tom Postell, Dead Black Poet", which contained lines including

...Smile jew. Dance, jew. Tell me you love me, jew. I got something for you ... I got the extermination blues, jewboys. I got the hitler syndrome figured ... So come for the rent, jewboys ... one day, jewboys, we all, even my wig wearing mother gonna put it on you all at once.

During the 1982–83 academic year, Baraka returned to Columbia University as a visiting professor, teaching a course entitled "Black Women and Their Fictions". After becoming a full professor of African Studies at Stony Brook in 1985, Baraka took an indefinite visiting appointment in Rutgers University's English department in 1988; over the next two years, he taught a number of courses in African American literature and music. Although Baraka sought a permanent, tenured appointment at the rank of full professor in early 1990 (in part due to the proximity between the University's campus in New Brunswick, New Jersey

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