the poet, playwright and political organizer Amiri Baraka. He died on Thursday in Newark, New Jersey, at the age of 79. Baraka was a leading force in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, but he first came to prominence as a Beat Generation poet when he co-founded the journal Yugen and published the works of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Gregory Corso.
At the time, he was known as LeRoi Jones. In 1963, he published Blues People: Negro Music in White America. The book has been called the first major history of black music to be written by an African American. A year later he published a collection of poetry titled The Dead Lecturer and won an Obie Award for his play, Dutchman.
“I was Everett LeRoi Jones. My grandfather’s name was Everett. He was a politician in that town. My family came to Newark in the ’20s. We’ve been there a long, long time. My father’s name was LeRoi, the French-ified aspect of it, because his first name was Coyette, you see. They come from South Carolina. I changed my name when we became aware of the African revolution and the whole question of our African roots. I was named by the man who buried Malcolm X, Hesham Jabbar, who died last week. He named me Amir Barakat. But that’s Arabic. I brought it down into Swahililand, into Tanzania, which is an accent. So it’s Amiri, instead of Amir, and, you know, Baraka, rather than Barakat, you know, which is interesting. If it was Amir Barakat, I would probably have more difficulty flying these days,” Amiri Baraka said.
In the late 1960s, Amiri Baraka moved back to his home town of Newark and began focusing more on political organizing. In 1967, he was nearly beaten to death by police during the urban uprising in Newark. The FBI once identified Baraka as, quote, “the person who will probably emerge as the leader of the pan-African movement in the United States.” Three years later, in 1970, he formed the Congress of African People and spoke at the Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana, two years later.
Amiri Baraka continued writing and performing poetry up until he was hospitalized late last year. In 2002, he was named poet laureate of New Jersey, a post that was eliminated after a poem he wrote about the September 11th attacks turned out to create a firestorm throughout the country and the state.
Komozi Woodard talking:
he was born in Newark, New Jersey, during the Great Depression in 1934, LeRoi Jones, kind of named after his father. And he went to Howard University, where he met Toni Morrison, Andy Young and people like that, that generation. He dropped out of—you know, people think he graduated from Howard, but he dropped out in his last semester of his senior year, and he joined—in disgrace, he joined the Air Force. And he got kicked out of the Air Force.
And then he became—he joined the Beat Poets down in Greenwich Village, where he began to—it’s kind of phenomenal. He became an editor of the Beat poetry. He just took it upon himself that—took that agency that he could take all the great poets and begin to collect that new American poetry.
He went to Cuba in 1960 at the invitation of Fidel Castro and with a delegation of black writers. He met Robert Williams there, who was a famous NAACP activist for self-defense. When he got back, he hooked up with Malcolm X. There’s a famous meeting late January 1965 between Malcolm X, Abdulrahman Babu and Amiri Baraka that lasted all night, where they discussed the international strategy for black liberation. Malcolm X is killed a few weeks later.
Baraka leaves Greenwich Village and goes to Harlem to found the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School 1965. Jazz musicians held a concert to raise the money for that new school and theater. Baraka had already written Blues People, which is an important work for him, because I think he found his poetic voice by studying the blues. And the rest is history. You know, he formed many Black Power organizations.
At his 75th birthday celebration, he and Sonia celebrated their 75th birthday a few years ago, and there were perhaps a thousand artists and actors there. And it occurred to me in the middle of that celebration that all of those people were his former students. So I think his—like his mentor, Sterling Brown, was asked, “What is your greatest work?” Brown said, “My students.” And I think Baraka would say the same thing.
Felipe talking:
1967, we had started a group called The Last Poets, and it was Gylan Kain, Abiodun Oyewole and David Nelson. And they introduced me—it was the first black and Puerto Rican aggregation. It had not happened before. And I met him with an enormous amount of trepidation. He started the Black Arts Movement, as our esteemed professor said, and we followed in that tradition four years later. And immediately he embraced me.
Amiri was the only intellectual, black intellectual, intellectual that I’ve met, who was able to bring together militancy with intellect; militancy, aggressive action, with scholarship. He was an incredibly learned man. He could quote Tennyson, Yeats, Wordsworth, Walt Whitman. He knew Ginsberg, introduced me to Allen Ginsberg. so I was in awe.
He always told me it’s important to read and write, write and read. And he said, “What is the use?” This is the first thing he told me: “What is the use of being ethereal and being escapist and romantic? Take the words and make them into bullets. Take the words and make them do something.” In fact, it was his poetry, his motivation, that led me from The Last Poets into the Young Lords.
“It’s Nation Time”. we were in a political campaign in 1970 to elect the first black mayor of Newark, and the workload was heavy. One person late at night said, “What time is it?” as if they wanted to go home and quit the detail. And an old man named Baba Mshauri said, “It’s nation time.” Baraka heard the story, and as he did with many of his poems, that story turned into this epic poem.
Adhimu Chunga. He gave me that name. I requested an African name after being a delegate to the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana, in March of 1972. I came out of the ghetto, off of 12th Street, off of Ridgewood Avenue, and going to the National Black Political Convention in Gary was an epiphany for me. It was my revolutionary transformation. And then, after that, I asked Baraka for an African name, and he gave me the name Adhimu Chunga in 1972, in March of 1972.
Amiri Baraka, I believe, was a great American revolutionary. And whatever desire I have in me for revolutionary social transformation comes from him.
Amiri Baraka talking:
“Newark rebellion. You have to start with slavery, because those abuses have never been eradicated. You know, people are not living in slums because they voted to. You know, their children are not in jail because they wanted them to. You know, these are the results of a people who have been oppressed and suffer national oppression, you know. And so, in a city like Newark, which is the third oldest city in the United States, by the way, where all these kind of abuses sort of converge, you know, and the racism on top of that—I mean, one absurd example is, one time I was directing a play, and the police rushed into the loft and the man actually took the script out of my hand, you know, as if it was some kind of a volatile weapon, you know.
So that day we had been picketing, because they had beaten up a black cab driver, a guy named John Smith. … And so, people gathered at that precinct, and then that was very explosive that night. That was the night before. That was, say, the 11th. So the next day, we were picketing that precinct, because that’s where it happened. And that was the day, by the time the sun started going down is when it broke out.
Mayor Addonizio, “No Neck” Addonizio. And his Spina, OK, was the—it was interesting that Spina, who was the police chief, when they beat me up, they didn’t take me to prison or to the—they took me to Spina’s office, you know, and threw me on the floor. And he says, you know, just like I’m right out of the movies, “They got you,” you know. And I said, “But I ain’t dead.”
To his office, not to jail. But since I had given my given name, Everett L. Jones, laborer, you know, then they could deny, until my wife got hold of Ginsberg, Allen Ginsberg and he had gotten a hold of Jean-Paul Sartre. And Sartre from France called the police station. Sartre and Ginsberg and those people started, you know—and then, the only reason I got my life saved is the people in the apartment building where they were beating me started throwing things out of the window at them. Otherwise, I would be gone, you know.
But it was a very, very—the racism that existed there— and harassing them, you know, in that town. See, the town is too small for you to be doing something. And they actually had policemen stop a poetry reading. I mean, that’s how wild it was getting. They would ride up and down the street and make remarks at my wife and the other ladies in that block, calling them all kinds of slurs. I mean, this was a daily, a nightly thing. And so, it became like, you know, back and forth, back and forth, you know. And finally, it just erupted.
We were trying to do things—we were putting out literature suggesting that we could have a mayor, we could have a city council. You know, that’s—Stokely had come out with “Black Power,” and I would staple that—not staple, what do you call it?—spray-paint “Black Power” on all these buildings in the city, you know. So they knew who it was.
And once I got arrested, they ran in my house to destroy all the leaflets and stuff that we were—but my wife was smart enough to get that stuff out of there and move it to somebody else’s house down the street. But they destroyed our mimeograph machines and stuff like that. They destroyed my car, you know. I mean, it was, you know, a search-and-destroy mission, because they knew who it was, you know, in that little context.
But the whole city, you know, as Harper’s magazine said, the worst city in the United States was Newark, 18,000-people density in one square-mile. You know, talking about the project. So it was a city that was always on the verge, you know.
”
He went from Beat poetry to cultural nationalism to revolutionary nationalism to socialism and then to communism. He calls me one day, and he says, “Why don’t you come over?” I had been working with him at the Committee for Unified NewArk, where we were trying to get Ken Gibson elected.
The mayor, the first black mayor of Newark. And I was working with him assiduously. We were working with him, working within the Puerto Rican community, the black community. And when I—when we started the Lords, Juan, he said, “Why don’t”—we sat together one night. He said, “Why don’t we start a mutual defense pact?” I said, “Amiri, are you serious?” He said, “Why not?” I said, “It’s difficult enough dealing with black folk within Newark,” because Newark was up south, as we called it. It was like Baltimore. He said, “Let’s try to put together a black and Puerto Rican pact.” And believe it or not, it was the first mutual defense pact between African Americans and Puerto Ricans. His evolution, his foresight was astounding.
He loved Latino culture. To see him and Amina dance mambo, I mean, was a trip. He embraced Pedro Pietri. He embraced Miguel Piñero. He embraced Victor Hernández Cruz. He embraced every Puerto—we, as Nuyorican poets, the post-colonial, modern—the new urban Négritude movement was in fact started by Amiri Baraka and the Black Arts Movement in 1964.
that Mayor Gibson was elected because Amiri Baraka and the Committee for a Unified NewArk organized the Black and Puerto Rican Convention, and that took place at what is today University High School, then was Clinton Place Junior High School. That alliance—Gibson was not elected just by the black vote in Newark.
an alliance between African Americans and Puerto Ricans. And this continued. It wasn’t just—you mention Ramon Rivera, who continued to be an activist in Newark during those days. He and Amiri had a very close relationship.
Baraka was a poet. And Maya Angelou and Abbey Lincoln called a demonstration to protest the death of Lumumba at the United Nations. And Baraka had gotten arrested, like many other people. The police were beating people up. And so, he got arrested. And in jail, he realized that Askia Muhammad Touré and the other people he was demonstrating with were poets. So his politics and his poetry kind of ran together. But they were just experimenting with poetry. And he had a—I think Blues People was him finding his poetic voice. If you listen to his poetry before Blues People and after Blues People, you kind of hear that blues ethos and jazz aesthetic that, in much of it, he got from Langston Hughes.
In Newark rebellion he was nearly beaten to death by the police. They pulled him out of his van, and several other people, and began—I guess they knew who he was. So they surrounded him and beat him. One black cop stood on the side and assumed that they were going to beat him to death. And apparently the people from the community saw what was going on and began to throw litter and bottles at the police, and they had to take him to the jail. And then they lost him, as he said, and Sartre helped them find him. So, it took Paris to find him.
But Baraka is interesting. One of the people who saved his life was this wino named Rabbit. So, one day Rabbit walked into our headquarters, and I said, “What is this wino coming into the thing there?” And he said, “Where’s LeRoi?” And I said, “This must—this is crazy. What are you talking about?” “Where’s LeRoi?”
And Baraka comes down in his suit and talked to the wino for about five minutes and gave him $5. So I said, “What’s going on here?” And everyone said, “That’s the guy who saved his life. He was the one that testified at the trial and said that he was beaten by the police and what happened.” So, he knew—Baraka had a thousand different faces, and he knew all kinds of people. And that was one of his lessons to us, I think, was to treat everyone equally and the same.
Amiri Baraka was the first one that I heard call the Newark riots a rebellion and place those riots in the context of the black freedom struggle, that it was not simply a riot, a momentary occurrence that could easily be put down by a handful of police. Newark had a police force at that time of close to 1,500. They couldn’t stop it. They brought in 700 state troopers. They couldn’t stop it. They brought in, what, 3,000 National Guard. Fifteen hundred people were wounded, 27 or more people were killed. And it was Baraka who helped me to understand that this was part of black people’s struggle for liberation, that it was more than simply a riot, that it was part of a continuum of collective struggle in this country.
Amiri had moved much more in a radical direction and much more to socialism and Marxism. it’s important for people to understand that Baraka did not make this change suddenly. First and foremost, Baraka pointed young people like me to Africa and to African leaders, revolutionary leaders like Kwame Nkrumah, like Amílcar Cabral in Guinea-Bissau, like Samora Machel in Mozambique, like Mwalimu Julius Nyerere in Tanzania. You cannot read these people and not eventually move to the left, because many of them either call themselves socialists, Marxists or Marxist-Leninists. So, Baraka and the members of the Committee for a Unified Newark, members of the Congress of African People, were studying these people. So, for me, from an intellectual point of view, it’s almost inevitable that they would move in that direction. And early on, I can remember, you know, Baraka followed a brand of black nationalism called Kawaida. But I can remember when the poster came out that condensed Kawaida down to the three cutting edges: black nationalism, pan-Africanism and revolutionary socialism. And that was as early as 1972, I believe.
So he was way ahead. Or maybe he was really in his time. Maybe we were behind, and he was on point, and we were trying to catch up to him.
In 1960, after Fidel moves into Havana, it was Amiri Baraka who, with a group of 350 or more black intellectuals, starts a Fair Play for Cuba Committee—who would have done that?—and decried the blockade. He was the first one who said, “Let’s bring together these communities.” The man was into Sékou Touré. He was into Kwame Nkrumah. I hadn’t read Sékou Touré’s poetry. I had never read it. This guy brought an African socialist to our shows and had us meet him. So, for a black Puerto Rican to sit and understand that a black intellectual was sitting down and discussing global socialism was, for me, mind-boggling. So, he introduced—he said, “It’s not enough to write the stuff. It’s not enough to sit there and be an armchair liberal.” That’s why he loved Allen Ginsberg so much, because Ginsberg was about doing stuff. insberg told me, “This is the guy.” After Whitman, after Robert Frost, after Ginsberg, there is Amiri Baraka.
AMIRI BARAKA: Just like Malcolm X told me the month before he died, and just like Martin Luther King told me the week before he died, in my house, said, “What we must have, Brother Baraka, is a united front.” We must build that united front, no matter whether you’re the Panthers, the cultural nationalists, whether you believe in rap or whether you believe in hip-hop, whether you’re a Muslim or a Christian, or a vegetarian, or you don’t even know what you is. You understand what I’m saying? We have got to put that together first to do what? To beat Bush. That’s the key link. But the overall theme has to be to fight for a people’s democracy.
talking about socialism and talking about communism, the left, I mean, one of the things that Brother Baraka told me is that how he really became very much involved with that was through Amina [Baraka’s wife]. Sister Amina began to question where they were with their politics. She began a very involved study in terms of communism.
And we began to understand that it was not just his movement by himself, but it was that move with the two of them, that movement with the two of them to begin to move towards the left. You know, Fanon said, simply, “What is needed is to hold oneself, like a sliver, to the heart of the world, to interrupt if necessary the rhythm of the world, to upset, if necessary, the chain of command, but … to stand up to the world.” This brother, this brother, you know, stood up to the world. This brother stood up to the world, you know, because he said, “I am doing battle for the creation of a human world.” We must never forget that, that he was doing battle for a human world, as Fanon said.
[get] http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2014/1/10/remembering_amiri_baraka_part_2_featuring
– source democracynow.org
Felipe Luciano, poet, activist, journalist and writer. He knew Amiri Baraka for 43 years. He co-founded the Young Lords and was an original member of the poetry and musical group, The Last Poets.
Sonia Sanchez, renowned writer, poet, playwright, activist, and one of the foremost leaders of the black studies movement. She is the author of over a dozen books. Sanchez is Philadelphia’s poet laureate. She’s a longtime friend and colleague of Amiri Baraka.
Komozi Woodard, professor of history at Sarah Lawrence College. He is the author of A Nation Within a Nation: Amiri Baraka and Black Power Politics.
Larry Hamm, chairman of the People’s Organization for Progress in Newark, New Jersey. He was named Adhimu by Amiri Baraka.