Oct. 7, 1934 Playwright Author Poet Activist Critic Educator

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• Born in Newark, New Jersey the son of Colt LeRoy Jones, a postal supervisor, and Anna Lois Jones, a social worker. The product of a middle-class family.
  

• 1952 - From Rutgers University transferred to Howard University where he dropped out to join the Air Force. Changed his name spelling to LeRoi, a "Frenchified" version. He began writing for journals during this period.
  

  BEAT PERIOD (1957-1962)

• 1957 - After leaving the Air Force under undesirable circumstances, he moved to the Lower East side of Manhattan and joined a loose circle of Greenwich Village artists, musicians, and writers.
  

• 1958 - Married Hettie Cohen, a middle-class Jewish woman, and co-edited the avant-garde magazine, Yugen. During this period he first published prose and poetry.
  

• 1961 - Earned praise and respect as a poet with his first volume of poetry, "Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note..." -AND- Went to Cuba and wrote the essay, "Cuba Libre" -AND- production of his play, Dante at the Bowery Theatre. This was a philosophical turning point in his life.
  

• 1961 - In The Baptism he reviewed the territory of James Baldwin's Go Tell It On the Mountain with a surrealist imagination.
  

• 1962 - The Toilet again focused on adolescence as a quest for love in the socially enforced guise of toughness (these last two plays deal with theme of homosexuality).
  

• 1962 - In The Slave he continued the theme of the confrontation of a black poet/revolutionary with a white woman friend/antagonist.
  

  TRANSITIONAL PERIOD (1963-1965)

• 1964 - Baraka's reputation as a playwright was established with the production of Dutchman at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York on March 24, 1964. The play was in the manner of a seemingly realistic one act play, although there were some unrealistic elements. Clay's big monologue became the text of the 1960s black activists. The play also won the Obie award for best play and film was made.
  

  BLACK NATIONALIST PERIOD (1965-1974)

• 1965 - Baraka solidified his hate for whites with the death of Malcolm X. He turned his back on his previous life and career -AND- his marriage broke up and he moved to Harlem and Newark and married Amina (Sylvia Robinson).
  

• 1965 - Founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School in Harlem which produced Baraka plays which were often anti-white plays for black only audience. The theatre dissipated in a few months.
  

• 1967 - He also founded the Spirit House Players in Newark and other cultural and political organizations. Among the Spirit House productions were two anti-white plays against police brutality: Police and Arm Yourself and Harm Yourself.
  

• 1968 - His play, Home on the Range was performed as a benefit for the Black Panther part.
  

• 1968 - He dropped his western name and adopted the Muslim name of Imamu Amiri Baraka.
  

• 1969 - His Great Goodness of Life became part of the successful Black Quartet on Off-Broadway -AND- his Slave Ship was widely reviewed (portrays black history as suffering in the bowels of a slave ship on a two-tiered stage.
  

  THIRD WORLD MARXIST PERIOD (1974- )

• 1974 - Baraka moved toward political activities and dropped the spiritual title, Imamu and adopted a Marxist Leninist philosophy (he called for the working class to revolt against the bourgeoisie).
  

• Baraka addressed pressing social, sexual, psychological, and artistic implications of race in the United States -AND- he is referred to as a modernist in that he abandons realism and naturalism -AND- he influenced the future black playwrights like Ed Bullins.
  

• 1992 - Baraka visited EMU and read poetry and shared his ideas with the audience.
  

• Today, Baraka is a critic, poet, playwright, and activist who still gets recognized as an outspoken critic and advocate for the rights and equality of African Americans. He frequently tours to speaking and reading engagements at universities and colleges nation-wide.
  

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  DUTCHMAN
• Dutchman was first presented at The Cherry Lane Theatre, New York City on March 24, 1964 with Jennifer West and Robert Hooks. A film version was made starring Al Freeman, Jr. and Shirley Knight.
  

• The play marked the emergence of Baraka's heightened sense of racial awareness. It was an archetypal lesson depicting the way a dominant White society attempts to tease, disrespect, and ultimately destroy black men who speak out against their oppressors.
  

• It was hailed for its powerful evocation of the black man's oppression and homogenation in the Euro-American culture of the United States. A shocking indictment of a racist white society and the inner feelings of black men.
  

• Dutchman and The Slave demonstrate the philosophical change Baraka was undergoing.
  

• Clay not only expresses his anger, like Bigger in Native Son, but also:
  - awareness; his ability to analyze and articulate his condition
  - through Clay's awareness, Baraka attempts to educate the White society to the feelings and situations of the collective black man
  - the soliloquy is a furious account of Negro art as a substitute for murder
  

• The characters Lula and Clay are not conventional, but archetypes:
  

  - Clay, the Negro square wearing his uniform, a three button suit
  

  - Lula, the white Bohemian, entering as Eve with the apple--a temptress with a complete catalogue and storehouse of Bohemian vices--she seduces and attacks Clay's manhood
  
• The characters of the silent, onlooking passengers express an indifference to the violence before their eyes that marks them as true New Yorkers enjoying public transportation.

"Baraka seeks to educate white society to the feelings and situations of the collective Black man."

"[His] play challenges the whole proposition of integration. The question which he is asking is, 'integration into what?' Western rationalism, 'the great intellectual legacy of the white man.'"

"Up to the time of the outburst, the boy has been winning every round anyway, and it just wont do to suddenly cast him as the representative of the exploited telling off his exploiters."

Baraka, Amiri. The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones. New York: Freundlich Books, 1984.

Harris, William J. ed. The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1991.

Jones, LeRoi. Dutchman. New York: Morrow Quill Paperbacks, 1964.

_____. Contemporary Literary Criticism. 33. pp. 51-52.

Nieves, Evelyn. "Malcolm X: Firestorm Over a Script." The New York Times (August 9, 1991): B1 (L).

Oliver, Edith. "Off Broadway: 'Over the Edge'." The New Yorker (April 4, 1964): 78-79.