"If the flag of an armed enemy of the U.S. is allowed to fly over government buildings, then it implies that slavery, or at least the threat of slavery, is sanctioned by that government and can still legally exist." -- Amiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka (born October 7, 1934), formerly known as LeRoi Jones, is an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism. An often controversial figure, he is the author of numerous books of poetry and has taught at a number of universities, including the State University of New York at Buffalo and the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
"A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.""A rich man told me recently that a liberal is a man who tells other people what to do with their money.""God has been replaced, as he has all over the West, with respectability and air conditioning.""There is other disturbing facts surround the hideous 911 attacks, which my family and I could see from the third floor bathroom window of our homes!""This is said to us, even as this counterfeit president has legalized the Confederate Flag in Mississippi.""Thought is more important than art. To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is.""To name something is to wait for it in the place you think it will pass."
Baraka was born Everett LeRoy Jones in Newark, New Jersey, where he attended Barringer High School. His father, Coyt Leverette Jones, worked as a postal supervisor and lift operator. His mother, Anna Lois (née Russ), was a social worker. In 1967 he adopted the African name Imamu Amear Baraka, which he later changed to Amiri Baraka.
The Universities where he studied were Rutgers, Columbia, and Howard Universities, leaving without a degree, and the New School for Social Research. He won a scholarship to Rutgers University in 1951, but a continuing sense of cultural dislocation prompted him to transfer in 1952 to Howard University. His major fields of study were philosophy and religion. Baraka also served three years in the U.S. Air Force as a gunner. Baraka continued his studies of comparative literature at Columbia University.
Baraka studied philosophy and religion at Rutgers University, Columbia University and Howard University without obtaining a degree. In 1954 he joined the US Air Force, reaching the rank of sergeant.
After an anonymous letter to his commanding officer accusing him of being a communist led to the discovery of Soviet writings, Baraka was put on gardening duty and given a dishonorable discharge for violation of his oath of duty.
The same year, he moved to Greenwich Village working initially in a warehouse for music records. His interest in jazz began in this period. At the same time he came into contact with the incipient movement of Beat Poets that would later have a powerful influence on his early poetry. In 1958, Jones founded Totem Press, which published such Beat icons as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. The same year, he married Hettie Cohen (who later changed her name to Hettie Jones) and together they founded the literary magazine Yugen, which ran for 8 issues until 1962. Baraka also edited the magazine the Floating Bear during his period with the Beat writers.
He also worked as a clerk at the Gotham Book Mart, where he undoubtedly came into contact with many other well-known authors and poets.
In 1960 he went to Cuba, a visit that initiated his transformation into a politically active artist. In 1961 Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note was published, followed in 1963 by Blues People: Negro Music in White America ... to this day one of the most influential volumes of jazz criticism, especially in regard to the then beginning Free Jazz movement. His acclaimed controversial play Dutchman premiered in 1964 and received an Obie Award the same year.
After the assassination of Malcolm X, Baraka broke free from the Beat Poets. He left his wife and their two children and moved to Harlem, considering himself at that time a black cultural nationalist. He broke away from the Beat movement because he felt it did not reflect his political ideas. The Beat poets did not embrace capitalism, but they were not radical enough regarding their critique of capitalism. As Baraka became more expressive of his feelings toward the progress of the Civil Rights movement and capitalism, his poetry became more controversial His poem “Black Art” (1969) according to Werner Sollors, expresses his need to commit the violence required to “establish a Black World.” Rather than use poetry as an escapist mechanism, Baraka used poetry as a weapon of action. His poetry committed violence against those he felt were responsible for the aspects of society he felt were unjust. Baraka used placement of real objects in his poetry as a way to make his African American readers identify with his works. By providing something familiar in his works, he hoped to inspire them to fight and revolt against society.
In 1966, Baraka married his second wife, Sylvia Robinson, who later adopted the name Amina Baraka. In 1967 he lectured at San Francisco State University In 1968, he was arrested in Newark for allegedly carrying an illegal weapon and resisting arrest during the 1967 Newark riots, and was subsequently sentenced to three years in prison; shortly afterward an appeals court reversed the sentence based on his defense by attorney, Raymond A. Brown. That same year his second book of jazz criticism, Black Music, came out, a collection of previously published music journalism, including the seminal Apple Cores columns from Down Beat magazine. In 1970 he strongly supported Kenneth A. Gibson's candidacy for mayor of Newark; Gibson was elected the city's first Afro-American Mayor. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Baraka courted controversy by penning some strongly anti-Jewish poems and articles, similar to the stance at that time of the Nation of Islam.
Around 1974, Baraka distanced himself from Black nationalism and became a Marxist and a supporter of anti-imperialist third-world liberation movements. In 1979 he became a lecturer SUNY-Stony Brook's Africana Studies Department. The same year, after altercations with his wife, he was sentenced to a short period of compulsory community service. Around this time he began writing his autobiography. In 1980 he denounced his former anti-semitic utterances, declaring himself an anti-zionist
In 1984 Baraka became a full professor at Rutgers University, but was subsequently denied tenure. In 1987, together with Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison, he was a speaker at the commemoration ceremony for James Baldwin. In 1989 he won an American Book Award for his works as well as a Langston Hughes Award. In 1990 he co-authored the autobiography of Quincy Jones, and 1998 was a supporting actor in Warren Beatty's film Bulworth.
Baraka collaborated with hip hop group The Roots on the song "Something in the Way of Things (In Town)" on their 2002 album Phrenology.
In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Amiri Baraka on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.
In 2003, Baraka's daughter Shani, age 31, and her lesbian partner, Rayshon Homes were murdered in the home of Shani's sister, Wanda Wilson Pasha by Pasha's ex-husband, James Coleman. Prosectors argued that Coleman shot Shani because she has helped her sister separate from her husband. A New Jersey jury found Coleman (also know as Ibn El-Amin Pasha) guilty of murdering Shani Baraka and Rayshon Holmes and sentenced him to 168 years in prison for the 2003 shooting.
Baraka's writings have generated controversy over the years, particularly his advocacy of rape and violence towards (at various times) women, gay people, white people, and Jews. Critics of his work have alternately described such usage as ranging from being vernacular expressions of Black oppression to outright examples of racism, sexism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism that they perceive in his work.
The following is from a 1965 essay:
Most American white men are trained to be fags. For this reason it is no wonder their faces are weak and blank. The average ofay [white person] thinks of the black man as potentially raping every white lady in sight. Which is true, in the sense that the black man should want to rob the white man of everything he has. But for most whites the guilt of the robbery is the guilt of rape. That is, they know in their deepest hearts that they should be robbed, and the white woman understands that only in the rape sequence is she likely to get cleanly, viciously popped.
In 2009, he was again asked about the quote, and placed it in a personal and political perspective:
Those quotes are from the essays in Home, a book written almost fifty years ago. The anger was part of the mindset created by, first, the assassination of John Kennedy, followed by the Assassination of Patrice Lumumba, followed by the assassination of Malcolm X amidst the lynching, and national oppression. A few years later, the assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. What changed my mind was that I became a Marxist, after recognizing classes within the Black community and the class struggle even after we had worked and struggled to elect the first Black Mayor of Newark, Kenneth Gibson.
Amiri Baraka wrote a poem titled "Somebody Blew Up America" about the September 11, 2001 attacks. The poem was controversial and highly critical of racism in America, and includes angry depictions of public figures such as Trent Lott, Clarence Thomas, and Condoleezza Rice. The poem also contains lines claiming Israel's involvement in the World Trade Center attacks:
Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombedWho told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin TowersTo stay home that dayWhy did Sharon stay away?[...]Who know why Five Israelis was filming the explosionAnd cracking they sides at the notion
Baraka has said that he believed Israelis (and President George W. Bush) were involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, citing what he described as information that had been reported in the American and Israeli press and on Jordanian television. He denies that the poem is anti-Semitic, and points to its accusation, which is directed against Israelis, rather than Jews as a people. The Anti-Defamation League denounced the poem as anti-Semitic, though Baraka and his defenders defined his position as Anti-Zionism.
Baraka was named Poet Laureate of New Jersey nine months after the attacks, in July of 2002. After this poem's publication, Governor Jim McGreevey tried to remove Baraka from the post, only to discover that there was no legal way to do so. In 2003, after legislation was passed allowing him to do so, McGreevey abolished the NJ Poet Laureate title. In response to legal action filed by Baraka, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that state officials were immune from such suits, and in November 2007 the Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear an appeal of the case.
In response to the attempts to remove Baraka as Poet Laureate of New Jersey, a nine-member advisory board named him the poet laureate of the Newark Public Schools in December 2002.
Baraka has received honors from a number of prestigious foundations, including: fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, the Langston Hughes Award from the City College of New York, The Rockefeller Foundation Award for Drama, an induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Before Columbus Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award.
