2. Amiri Baraka Amiri Baraka was born on October 7th 1934 Newark, New Jersey He was born with the name Everett Leroy Jones It wasn’t until 1967 that he changed it
3. Amiri Baraka Growing up, Baraka went to the public schools of Newark and then on to Rutgers University and Howard University. After leaving Howard University in 1954, he joined the U.S. Air Force, only to later be discharged for unapproved political activities.
4. Amiri Baraka After his military discharge, Baraka settled in New York City. He married a woman named Hettie Cohen and worked as a critic, coeditor, and other positions for mainstream Jazz magazines.
5. Amiri Baraka His most recognizable and best known for work came in 1964, when Baraka produced Dutchman. Dutchman won an Obie award for being one of the year’s best Off-Broadway plays.
6. Amiri Baraka In 1965 Baraka left his wife and children and moved to Harlem, where he announced himself as a black cultural nationalist and founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre. He soon after married a black woman, Sylvia Robinson (who later became Amina Baraka) and had five children.
7. Amiri Baraka Through the 1960’s Baraka’s writings developed more and more into radical and racial identity. In his early work, Amiri Baraka wrote of topics like suicide, death, and self hatred. But his view took a new turn in the sixties and he focused highly on the separation of the races and political activism.
8. Amiri Baraka Baraka was very involved in confronting the racial issues being faced in the sixties. He was an outspoken leader in the Black Nationalist Movement in the late sixties and was a close associate the Black Panther party.
9. Amiri Baraka Amiri Baraka had another change of heart in 1964 when his political ideology underwent another change. He abandoned black nationalism and embraced Marxist Lenninism, supporting the revolutionary overthrow of capitalist system, whether black or white.
10. Amiri Baraka Baraka taught at several different universities through the sixties and seventies Since the 1980’s he has taught at the State University of New York, Stony Brook He continues to write poetry and drama as well as essay on social subjects and on Jazz. He is still highly recognized for his brilliant piece Dutchman.
