off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theater in New
York City. Eventually made into a film, this play,
through its main characters, Clay and Lula, sug-
gests, as DARWIN T. TURNER points out, “the man-
ner in which the white world destroys the black
who intellectually has become a threat; simulta-
neously, it denounces the black who chooses to
use his knowledge in sterile pursuits rather than
directing it toward the destruction of oppres-
sion” (18). Despite the anger his work expresses,
Baraka remained committed, until he was deeply
affected by the assassination of MALCOLM X in
1965, to Western aesthetics, specifically Western
use of language.
Following Malcolm X’s death, however, Baraka
revised his artistic perspective and commitment,
prioritizing a more functional art as demanded by
a traditional African and black aesthetic. Together
with LARRY NEAL he spearheaded the BLACK ARTS
MOVEMENT and founded the short lived Black
Arts Repertory Theater in Harlem to produce agi-
tation-propaganda (agitprop) plays and poetry
that strictly addressed the needs and liberation of
black people. Baraka and Neal identified the utili-
tarian function of art in the black community in
their respective works, “Black Art” and the “Black
Arts Movement.” Baraka announced the urgency
for transition and revolution in “SOS”—“Calling
all black people /... Wherever you are.... /...
come in, black people, come / on in”—and penned
“Black Art,” which became the movement’s mani-
festo: “Poems are bullshit unless they are / teeth
or trees or lemons piled / on a step.... We want
‘poems that kill.’ / Assassin poems. Poems that
shoot / guns.” Neal explained:
Neal pronounced that “The Black Arts Move-
ment is radically opposed to any concept of the
artist that alienates him from his community.
Black Art is the aesthetic and spiritual sister
of the Black Power concept, as such, it envi-
sions an art that speaks directly to the needs
and aspirations of Black America. In order to
perform this task, the Black Arts Movement
proposes a radical reordering of the western
cultural aesthetic” (257).In 1968 Baraka and Neal coedited Black Fire,
the signature anthology of black revolutionary lit-
erature. Baraka’s play Home on the Range was per-
formed as a benefit for the Black Panther Party.
In 1969 his Great Goodness of Life became part of
the Successful Black Quartet off-Broadway, and his
play Slave Ship was widely reviewed.
In New Jersey Baraka became a leading politi-
cal voice; he founded and chaired the Congress of
African People, a nationalist Pan-Africanist orga-
nization, and was one of the chief organizers of
the National Black Political Convention, which
convened in Gary, Indiana. He also founded Spirit
House Players and produced two plays, Police and
Arm Yrself or Harm Yrself, that addressed police
brutality in urban black communities. In addition,
Baraka divorced from Hettie Cohen, with whom
he had fathered two children; married Sylvia Rob-
inson (Amina Baraka), an African-American with
whom he fathered five children; became a Mus-
lim; changed his name to Imamu Amiri Baraka;
and committed himself completely to black lib-
eration and Black Nationalism. He assumed
leadership of Kawaida, founded to promote the
ideology of Black Muslims and Black Nationalism
and, from 1968 until 1975, was the chairman of
the Committee for Unified Newark, becoming, as
Eugene Redmond noted, “the most influential of
the young activist poets” of his generation (12).
In 1974, disappointed and disgruntled with
both Islamic and Black Nationalist ideology,
Baraka dropped Imamu (“teacher”) from his
name and soon thereafter embraced a more Marx-
ist-Leninist position. In 1983 he and Amina edited
Confirmation: An Anthology of African American
Women, which won an American Book Award
from the Before Columbus Foundation, and in
1987 they published The Music: Reflections on Jazz
and Blues. Baraka independently published his
life story, The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones / Amiri
Baraka, in 1984.
Baraka has won numerous literary prizes, in-
cluding a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a
National Endowment of the Arts Grant, the PEN /
Faulkner Award, the Rockefeller Foundation Award
for Drama, and the Langston Hughes Award from34 Baraka, Amiri