Le ROI Jones was the original name for the activist who became Amiri Baraka. He came from the Beat Movement to activism after the assassination of Malcolm X, taking his new name. As a writer, he was able to contribute a literate voice to the civil rights and Black Power movements. This paper will outline those contributions that he made to both of these movements, including founding the Black Arts Movement.
Early Life
Jones was born and raised in Newark and took an interest in both music and writing at an early age. After graduating Howard University with a degree in English in 1954, he joined the Air Force. He was dishonorably discharged and then relocated to Manhattan. He attended Columbia University and became an artist in Greenwich Village, before becoming affiliated with the Beat Movement (Biography, 2014). He married Hettie Cohen and the two started a literary magazine together, and a family. This part of his life came to a close quickly, however, with the assassination of Malcolm X (Als, 2014).
Black Arts Movement
Jones' response to the assassination was to disavow his prior life, move to Harlem, change his name to Amiri Baraka and started the Black Arts Movement. This movement was the artistic counterpoint...
Context Baraka and his contemporaries show distinctly modernist trends in their works, which are also distinctly colored by the Civil Rights Movement era through which they lived and in which many -- including Baraka himself -- began their literary and intellectual careers. Baraka's own upbringing as the son of relatively well-off African-American parents, his experiences in higher education and in the military, and the details of his later life and relationships
The Politics of Twentieth Century Poetry: Amiri Baraka versus Allen Ginsberg The poetry of Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Allen Ginsberg are example of how serious literary works can be used as a vehicle of social change. Both poets wrote during tumultuous times in American history. Ginsberg is primarily associated with the Beat movement of American poetry, in which poets used sprawling, freeform verse to criticize American capitalism and American values. Baraka
Gay rights are also an issue of regular discussion. This sector of society is so marginalized that many states by law do not allow them to marry each other. Instead, they are expected to practice their courting and dating rituals in what is described as a "normal" way. Even religion is used as a basis for this type of discrimination. Indeed, despite many efforts to the contrary, discrimination is still very
These differing attitudes come into clearer focus in their more autobiographical poems. Baraka's "Leroy" shows his yearning for the black heritage that he sees being passed down to him through his mother and through him to the next generation of African-Americans. The poem is far more intimate than "Fresh Zombies." The title, Baraka's given name, announces the poem as a self-study, and the use of the first person voice makes
His own work was also published in a wide variety of literary magazines several of which were prestigious and nationally respected. His publication and involvement in publishing impressive accomplishments for an African-American man in the United States in the 1960's (Woodward, 1999). In 1957 he moved to Greenwich Village in New York and became interested in both in jazz and the Beat Movement. The following year he began the Totem
In fact, he identified himself entirely with it, even in his own self-reflection. In the reflective poem "leroy," published in 1969 under his newly adopted name Amiri Baraka, a nostalgic comment on his mother becomes a lofty vision of himself as the bearer of black wisdom -- that "strong nigger feeling" (5) -- from his ancestors forward to the next generation. He refers to this legacy that he is
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