Amiri Baraka (1934–2014)
Amiri Baraka's life spanned some of the most volatile and exciting periods in 20th century African American history and for much of that time he was passionately immersed in the fray. He was a man of deep emotions and strong opinions, always changing in response to the world around him. He was a beat poet in the 1950s, and then a cultural nationalist in the 1960s, and finally a Marxist by the 1980s. He was an artist of indisputable talent, and a revolutionary intellectual of unparalleled commitment. But it would do injustice to who he was in life to sugar coat his legacy. He was sometimes dead right and sometimes, in my opinion, dead wrong in his assessment of things and people. But he was never timid or opportunist, never afraid to speak his own truth. And he loved Black people, oppressed people, his people, and the life and struggle and art that they created. He took exceptional delight in the blues tradition.
I met Amiri Baraka in 1983 when he was teaching at Columbia University and I was a student there. Like many activists on campus, I enrolled in his class (he was a visiting professor for one year) looking for lively debate and new recruits for the anti-Apartheid movement on campus that I was deeply involved in. I was not disappointed on either score. The odd thing about that moment in my life is that I was wrapping up my time at Columbia, a non-traditional student, 27 years-old, and pregnant with my first child. This fact gave Amiri something to joke and bond with me about. “They not going to divest from South Africa ‘til you have that baby,” he would chide me, or “Ya'll better go out there and protest so this sister can sit down and rest,” he prodded my classmates.
But jokes aside that year was a painful one for Amiri Baraka and his family. That same year, his sister, Kimako Baraka, was brutally murdered by a man she had tried to help—stabbed in her own Manhattan apartment. The tragedy made front page news. A sober and somber Amiri missed a few days of class and returned weighted down by the devastating loss. His pain was palpable in every exchange we had that year. He and his wife, Amina Baraka, later co-founded Kimako's Blues People, a community arts space in Newark as tribute to his sister. Twenty years later, another horrific act of violence took the life of his youngest daughter, Shani Baraka, as she was targeted by the abusive and estranged husband of her older sister, who one day took out his rage on Shani and her partner, Rayshon Holmes, killing them both. In an emotional and cathartic open letter, an angry and bereft Amiri lashed out at the misogyny, racism, and homophobia that fueled violence against Black women, especially lesbian women like Shani and Rayshon. These losses took a toll on Amiri but they also inspired a deepened commitment to combatting violence against Black women, something he spoke about often and eloquently, although not with as much fanfare as other topics he took on.
I worked with Amiri most consistently during the years leading up to and following the Black Radical Congress (BRC) founded in Chicago in 1998. It was a project convened by Bill Fletcher Jr., Abdul Alkalimat, Leith Mullings, the late Manning Marable, and myself. The purpose was to bring together left-leaning, progressive and radical Black scholars, artists and activists across various ideological lines. Amiri was an active part of the BRC: arguing, debating, critiquing, cajoling and teaching every step of the way.
Amiri Baraka (once known as Leroi Jones) was a wordsmith: poet, fiction and non-fiction writer, playwright and editor. His 1964 Obie-award winning play, The Dutchman, marked the beginning of his ascendance as a literary figure. But politics were more important than fame. In a tribute to him after his death the Poetry Foundation wrote:
Baraka's legacy as a major poet of the second half of the 20th century remains matched by his importance as a cultural and political leader. His influence on younger writers has been significant and widespread, and as a leader of the Black Arts movement of the 1960s Baraka did much to define and support black literature's mission into the next century.
Another anonymous online obituary describes Amiri as an artist who “used his writing as a weapon against racism,” and as “one of the revolutionary provocateurs of African American poetry.” That, perhaps, says it all.
Stuart Hall (1932–2014)*
A founder of Cultural Studies but with an emphasis on dissecting race and empire, the Jamaican-born writer and sociologist, Stuart Hall, was a legendary figure among radical thinkers in Britain for the past 50 years. A founder of the landmark journal, New Left Review, Hall influenced radical scholars on both sides of the Atlantic. A recent film, “The Stuart Hall Project,” captured the breadth of his influence and the depth of his intellectual contributions. Never an elitist scholar, Hall was a public intellectual in the best sense of the term, grounded with the dispossessed, committed to a broad based notion of community, and invested in radical change.
Notes
*We learned of Stuart Hall's death just as we were completing this issue of Souls.