Amiri Baraka Black Liberation: Straight, No Chaser

By Komozi Woodard,

Sadly, some writers have focused exclusively on the militant linkage between Malcolm X and Amiri Baraka to the criminal neglect of the genius of poetic insight and monumental powers in the art of the spoken word that bound them together. Like Malcolm X, Baraka studied the etymology of words in the manner that a serious painter must study color and light. And, he reflected on the interconnections between written, spoken, performance, musical and visual language.

One thing that distinguished Amiri Baraka’s cultural work was that in searching for answers he returned to the Black source that was routinely obscured by white domination.[1] His research led him to examine a range of African American, Latin American, Caribbean and African vectors and traditions: thus, he examined the spiritual, musical, dance, sports, labor, literary & arts, intellectual and political aspects of Black life.

He discovered the genius of the African American endowment; and encouraged us to draw on that treasury of great resources and its imaginative powers as we rebuilt our communities and repaired our lives. Indeed, like Kenya’s novelist Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Baraka taught us the healing power in our cultural endowments. Remembering lessons from the Egyptian story of Isis and Osiris, Baraka fashioned Black Cultural Revolution to reconstitute what slavery and colonialism has dismembered and obliterated. According to tradition, when Isis discovered that her husband Osiris was killed, dismembered into 14 pieces and scattered over the land, she traveled throughout Egypt in “an act of love and devotion” to recover the fragments. With the help of the diety “she re-members the fragment and restores Osiris to life.”[2] Thus, Baraka fashioned a Black Arts Renaissance to re-member the Black America that had been taken into captivity, terrorized, lynched and castrated.

1.     Black spiritual movements and spirituality: The music of life

2.     Music & Dance

3.     Black sports genius and ethos

4.     Black Artisan Genius, imaginative labor power and technological invention

5.     Literature, Drama and the Arts

6.     Intellectual & Educational Life: A Life of Learning

7.     Political Life: self-governance, self-emancipation, self-determination, including African political economy

In terms of Black spiritual movements and African spirituality, we should begin with the fact that Amiri Baraka was raised in the Black church in Newark. During the Black Exodus from white terror in the Jim Crow Alabama and South Carolina, African American migrants transplanted Black spiritual movements in Newark, New Jersey. Thus, Baraka grew up keenly aware of the Moorish Science Temple Movement and Noble Drew Ali, Father Divine and his missions, and the works of the Sufi Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Sufi Message, Mastery and The Music of Life. Indeed, at one point, Amiri Baraka followed Malcolm X and developed himself into a spiritual leader, Imamu Amiri Baraka, founder of the Newark Spirit House, including the repertory ensemble, the Spirit House Movers & Players. Thus, Malcolm X’s minister, Hajj Heshaam Jaaber, anointed LeRoi Jones, Ameer Barakat or Blessed Prince in Arabic; and Maulana Karenga re-anointed him Amiri Baraka in Swahili. In his spiritual leadership, he encouraged the black community to follow Malcolm X’s three point program: “Wake Up, Clean Up & Stand Up!”

Second, Amiri Baraka studied and wrote passionately, informatively and prolifically about “the music” from Blues Peopleand Black Music to The Music and Digging: The Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music. Indeed, he and his wife, Amina Baraka, established the Blue Ark ensemble and toured widely with important Jazz musicians to keep the culture alive for the next generation; and at the same time, he performed vocals and performance poetry with numerous Jazz groups. He wrote a number of Jazz operas as well. Like Paul Robeson, Sterling Brown, Langston Hughes and Malcolm X before him, Baraka suggested that “the music” was at the center of African American culture, reflecting the contours of Black life.

Third, Baraka studied and wrote about the Black ethos in sports. In his youth he played basketball at the Queen of Angels Church and ran track at Barringer High School. And, as a writer he chronicled the early boxing career of Muhammad Ali and followed the martial arts scene in Newark. Indeed, Baraka understood that the Black sports ethos was part of the articulation of African American genius; and he placed emphasis on its important role in the education of young people. In his Black Power organizations, the Committee For A Unified New Ark (CFUN) and the Congress of African People, their weekly program included not only the martial arts but also jogging as a group around Weequahic Park and touch football on Saturdays.

Fourth, Baraka appreciated and celebrated the imaginative power of the Black labor that built the foundations of American civilizations. He supported the development of trade unions and walked the picket line in countless strikes. His commitment to the plight of working people led him to study African communalism, Tanzanian Ujamaa, the Arusha Declaration, scientific socialism and Marxism; he wanted to understand the role of a vibrant political economy in a health society. When he trained me in economic development, he sent me back to the New School to study marketing and he brought back books from Tanzania on socialist management. He established a number of cooperatives in working-class Newark in the 1970s. And, we talked frequently about comparative political economy.

Fifth, Amiri Baraka studied and mastered literature, drama and the arts. In fact, he struggled in his early years to choose between developing as an artist, a musician or a writer. He understood the importance of language generally and African American language specifically. Sadly, some writers have focused on the militant linkage between Malcolm X and Amiri Baraka to the criminal neglect of the genius of poetic insight and monumental powers in the art of the spoken word. Like Malcolm X, Baraka studied the etymology of words in the manner that a great painter would study color.

And, he reflected on the interconnections between written, spoken, performance, musical and visual language. When Baraka trained me to become the editor of his newspaper, Black Newark, he took me through the study of publishing. More recently, he suggested I study artists like David Siqueiros, Picasso and Elizabeth Catlett; and he introduced me to Catlett when Sonia Sanchez brought her to one of Baraka’s parties.

Moreover, from my earliest education with Baraka, he emphasized the importance of architecture and the impact it had on our way of life. He despised the harm that ghetto architecture did to the patterns of Black working class life; and he fought for community based architecture to redefine urban space in garden apartments, community clinics, shopping malls, public parks, sports fields and open air theatres. When we designed an apartment building, Kawaida Towers, Baraka had the architects place a children’s theatre in the basement with an internal cable television link so that the grandparents who lived upstairs could see their grandchildren perform on television. Finally, Baraka’s contribution to the renaissance in Black Theatre were formative on the Black Theatre Movement, inspiring playwrights and actors like August Wilson and Danny Glover. He appreciated the creative genius of Hip Hop artists like Ice Cube who went into acting and film.

Sixth, like Malcolm X, Amiri Baraka was a revolutionary intellectual and a master teacher. Wherever he went, he established salons for musicians, writers and artists and linked them intimately with community schools and other educational institutions. He encouraged the birth of the Black Studies Movement, pioneering those developments alongside Sonia Sanchez, Jimmy Garrett, Maulana Karenga, John Bracey, Haki Madhubuti, Michael Simanga and Molefi Asante. Beginning with the establishment of the Harlem Black Arts Repertory Theatre-School (BARTS), he usually connected theatre and school, including children’s theatres. And, when he and his wife Amina realized that the children in one neighborhood could not read the scripts, they established the African Free School in their home at the Spirit House. He taught Jazz and Blues history to students in the basement of his home. He encouraged the anti-poverty programs to establish Jazz 101 classes in the black community; he established a small television studio to teach the excluded Black and Puerto Rican workers skills in mass media: lighting, camera, set building, screenwriting, etc. He helped establish the Black Studies program at SUNY Stonybrook, where he was a professor for a few decades. And, he lectured all over the world for more than 50 years.

Finally, Amiri Baraka fashioned a rich politics of Black Liberation. Taking his lessons from Malcolm X, he struggled to make himself into a political leader who would represent and defend the cultural genius of Black America. Thus, he struggled to create a political culture and self-governing vehicles that expressed and drew on the imaginative powers embedded in the black community’s religions and spiritual movements, music and dance, artisan genius and labor power, renaissance culture, intellectual and educational life as well as its rich political traditions from Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman to Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer. Although he never sought public office, Amiri Baraka was a Nelson Mandela for Black America and a worthy son of Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As he matured he developed himself further with the study of Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Du Bois to master that stage of political leadership advising the next generation of political leadership. Baraka worked and studied with many of the great political leaders of his time from Presidents Sekou Toure and Mwalimu Julius Nyerere to Fidel Castro and Abdul Rahman Babu; and he flowered in the midst of a rich circle of political leadership in the Black Power Generation and the Black Arts Renaissance.

Thus, scholars and serious students will be studying the giant steps and footprints he left in the 20^th and the 21^stcenturies for quite some time.

In struggle,

Komozi Woodard, January 13, 2014