Remembering Amiri Baraka who died 7 years ago today

Amiri Baraka, previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka, was born in 1943 in Newark, N.J.

He was a writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays and music criticism.

For decades, Baraka was one of the most prominent voices in the world of American literature and one of the major forces in the Black Arts and Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

Throughout most of his career, Baraka published provocative works that challenged racism by presenting the experiences and suppressed anger of Black Americans in a white-dominated society.

One of Baraka’s crowning achievements stands as the cataloging of black culture and history in Blues People, “a panoramic sociocultural history of African American music,” as Eugene Holley, Jr., wrote for NPR.

Today, a number of well known poems, short stories, plays and commentaries on society, music and literature are associated with his name.

A few of the famous ones include, ‘The Music: Reflection on Jazz and Blues
’, ‘The Book of Monk’ and ‘New Music, New Poetry’ among others.

Mr. Baraka, who attended Columbia, Rutgers, and Howard University, taught at several universities, including the University at Buffalo and Stony Brook University.

Baraka was recognized for his work through a PEN/Faulkner Award, a Rockefeller Foundation Award for Drama, and the Langston Hughes Award from City College of New York. He was awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

He also is the father of Newark’s current mayor, Ras Baraka.

Amiri Baraka passed away Jan. 9, 2014 at age 79.