Born Everette Leroy Jones on October 7, 1934 in Newark, New Jersey, African American literary poet and advent conversationalist, Amiri Baraka's career has spanned almost 50 years. He has written numerous books of poetry on topics on black liberation, white racism, music and literature. His most notable work was "Music: the reflection of Jazz and Blues." In 1958, he married a Jewish women and poet, Hettie Jones. A famed quote from Baraka taken from an article he authored, " The Myth of a Negro Literature" he wrote," As long as black writers were obsessed with being an accepted middle class, 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. In the early 1960's he wrote a controversial play called "Dutchman" in which a black man gets attacked by a white woman on a subway, which he received an Obie Award for best American Play. Later his works turned from revolutionary to controversial like the poem "Black Art", in which he expressed violence as a necessity to establish the Black World.
--"Let there be no love poems written / until love can exist freely and cleanly" and " we want a black poem and a black world" which was a cry on social injustices and racism during those times.
After the death of Malcolm X, Baraka 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?" So he divorced Hettie and left her with their two mixed race daughters.
In the 1970's Amiri's political views turned from Black Nationalist to Communist, though he always showed favor toward communism in much of his writings such as "Declaration of Conscience" in which he fervently supported Fidel Castro's regime. He claimed the new Black Nationalists tarnished the movements ideals and work.
He taught at Columbia University and Stony Brook where he earned his title as professor emeritus of African Studies.
Though he was was an outspoken man during the Civil Rights movement and received a lot of positive attention and influence, he definitely had caused quite a stir for the Antisemitism, racism, homophobia, and sexism found in his works. Many argued that his self-righteousness and impulses toward separatism and Stalinist repression caused his literature to suffer. He died on January 9, 2014 due to diabetic complications.
