of whatever rank or distinction, might with
you equally enjoy the blessings thereof.” (Ban-
neker, 51)Banneker unabashedly informed Jefferson that the
“train of absurd and false ideas and opinions which
so generally prevails with respect to the Negro
should now be eradicated. Jefferson’s response
conveys a sense of sincerity: “no body wishes more
than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that
nature has given our black brethren, talents equal
to those of the other colours of men.” (quoted in
Baker, 110–111)
Committed to peace and justice, Banneker sug-
gested in an Almanac essay that the U.S. govern-
ment add to the president’s cabinet a secretary of
peace to offset the existing Department of War.
Banneker died in October 1806.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baker, Henry E. “Benjamin Banneker, The Negro
Mathematician and Astronomer.” Journal of Negro
History 3 (April 1918): 99–118.
Banneker, Benjamin. “Letter to Thomas Jefferson.” In
Black Writers of America, edited by Richard Barks-
dale and Keneth Kinnamon, 50–52. New York:
Macmillan Company, 1972.
Barksdale, Richard, and Keneth Kinnamon, eds. Black
Writers of America. New York: Macmillan Com-
pany, 1972.
Jefferson, Thomas. Notes on the State of Virginia. Ed-
ited by William Peden. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1955.
Jordan, Winthrop. White Over Black: American Atti-
tudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812. New York: W.
W. Norton, 1968.
Loggins, Vernon. The Negro Author: His Development
in American to 1900. Port Washington, N.Y.: Ken-
nikat Press, 1931.
Wilfred D. Samuels
Baraka, Amiri (Everett LeRoi Jones)
(1934– )
Prolific essayist, dramatist, short story writer, poet,
music critic, popular culture historian, and politi-
cal activist, Amiri Baraka was born Everett LeRoi
Jones to middle-class parents in Newark, New
Jersey. His father, Colt Leroy Jones, was a postal
supervisor, and his mother was a social worker.
After graduating from high school, where he had
amused himself by writing comic strips and sci-
ence fiction stories, he spent two years at Rutgers
University before transferring to Howard Univer-
sity, where he received a B.A. degree in English
in 1954. After his graduation, Baraka spent three
years in the U.S. Air Force, from which he was dis-
honorably discharged for submitting poetry to al-
leged communist publications.
In 1957 Baraka moved to Greenwich Village,
where he became “the most talented Black among
the Beats” (Redmond, 323); married Hettie Cohen,
a Jewish woman with whom he edited Yugin; and
became a music critic, primarily of jazz, for such
publications as Downbeat, Jazz Review, and Met-
ronome. He also founded Totem Press, which pub-
lished the works of such writers as Allen Ginsberg
and Jack Kerouac. Throughout the late 1950s,
Baraka, known for his vigorous language and
images, was not, for the most part, ideologically
driven. However, in 1960 he was invited to Cuba,
where he met with artists and writers who were
discussing the political ramifications of art and
revolution. Returning to an America deeply in the
throes of the Civil Rights movement led by MAR-
TIN LUTHER KING, JR., which was morphing into a
Black Power movement headed by MALCOLM X,
Baraka began to systematically integrate his art and
politics, particularly Black Nationalism, in order to
denounce white racism and oppression.
From 1961 to 1964 Baraka published Preface to
a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note (1963) and coed-
ited, with Diane DiPrima, Floating Bear, a literary
newsletter; he explored, biographically and the-
matically, his mistrust for European-American
society and culture in two plays: The Slave (1964)
and The Toilet (1964). Using African-American
music as a vehicle in Blues People: Negro Music
in White America (1963), he traced the transfor-
mation of Africans into American slaves. Also
in 1964 Baraka established his reputation as a
playwright when his controversial Obie Award–
winning play, Dutchman (1963), was producedBaraka, Amiri 33