Here is an excerpt about LeRoi Jones:
God has been replaced, as he has all over the West, with respectability and air conditioning."
-Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones)
LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) is a poet, writer, political activist and teacher. He was born in 1934, in Newark, New Jersey. He graduated from Howard University in 1953, and published his first major book of poetry, Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, in 1961. He founded Totem Press in 1958, which first published works by Kerouac, Ginsberg and other lesser-known writers of the time period.
Jones was also an accomplished playwright. His play Dutchman opened off-broadway and received critical acclaim. In Dutchman, an encounter between a white woman and a black intellectual exposes the suppressed anger and hostility of American blacks toward the dominant white culture. In 1965, he founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre in Harlem, and in 1968, he founded the Black Community Development and Defense Organization, a Muslim group committed to affirming black culture and to gaining political power for blacks.
In 1968, LeRoi Jones changed his name to Amiri Baraka in reverence of his Muslim beliefs. He has taught at several universities, and continues to write to this day.
1980 - today
In 1984 Baraka became a full professor at Rutgers University, but was subsequently denied tenure.[citation needed] In 1987, together with Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison, he was a speaker at the commemoration ceremony for James Baldwin. In 1989 he won an American Book Award for his works as well as a Langston Hughes Award. In 1990 he co-authored the autobiography of Quincy Jones, and 1998 was a supporting actor in Warren Beatty's film Bulworth.
Baraka collaborated with hip hop group The Roots on the song "Something in the Way of Things (In Town)" on their 2002 album Phrenology.
In 2003, Baraka's daughter Shani, age 31, was murdered in Piscataway Township, New Jersey.
Good luck to you.
