In the best of worlds, it would be unwise to call out the name Amiri Baraka in a crowded hall of black intellectuals. To bring up Baraka in a symposium on art and politics is to bring a conversation to a standstill. One of the most controversial Afro-American intellectuals of the last forty years, Baraka is admired, hated, feared, dismissed, adored, and despised. During the height of the Black Power era, many black intellectuals believed that the validity of an argument could be enhanced merely by its association with his name: “Imamu Baraka has stated . . .” Others used his name as a device of rhetorical dismissal that allowed the arguer to proclaim a heightened rationality. In such instances one might have heard, “Unlike Baraka, I believe that . . .” In still other instances, invocations of his name functioned as a backdrop that allowed conversationalists to define themselves rhetorically. One frequently heard, “Certainly Baraka overstates the point but . . .” or “Most major black intellectuals, except perhaps Baraka, believe . . .” or “but how does your argument account for a figure like LeRoi Jones?” Whether celebrated or venerated, the singularity of Baraka’s example was ubiquitous.
I cannot recall when I first became aware LeRoi Jones’s existence. His name was neither prominently mentioned in my Northeast Washington, D.C., home, nor was he read in my high school. Of course, I could have read his writing on my own initiative, but I was too caught up in world politics and American political history. Several days before graduating from DeMatha Catholic High School in 1971, I received from Mrs. Hallie Ward, a family friend, a graduation present consisting of paperback copies of Blues People and Black Magic Poetry. Mrs. Ward gave me the books and asked: “You do know who he is, don’t you?” I muttered some weak response and dishonestly nodded my head yes. I had heard of LeRoi Jones, but I did not know who he was or what he did. As a proud graduate of West Virginia State, a traditional black college, Mrs. Ward was thrilled by the “race advancement” embodied in my admission to Harvard. Unknown to me, she was intent on fortifying me with a recognition of my intellectual forebears.
The year was 1971. I eagerly awaited leaving home for Harvard College. During the summer before my matriculation, I received a welcoming packet from A.F.R.O., Harvard’s black student organization. The packet included the requisite welcomes and declarations describing Harvard as racially alien to the interests of emancipation-minded black people. But the packet also contained a booklet written by Imamu Amiri Baraka in which he spelled out the seven principles of the Nguzu Saba, a black nationalist philosophy of life (code of conduct) created by Maulana Ron Karenga.
I was baffled by the packet, particularly Baraka’s essay. Why did they send it to me? I did not immediately understand the relevance of Baraka’s essay to my enrollment at Harvard. Shortly after arriving in Cambridge, I began spending time with a first-year Radcliffe student who sprinkled quotations from Baraka and Sonia Sanchez into her everyday conversation. For reasons that had little to do with intellectual curiosity, I decided that I had better learn more about these two writers.
I soon discovered that Baraka was a celebrated figure among many of the “politicized” black students at Harvard and other colleges in the Boston area. A photograph of his enraged face and bandaged head taken after his police beating during the Newark riots became a popular poster on dorm room walls. Moreover, his writings appeared regularly in The Black Scholar and Black World, the two journals most important to my exposure to contemporary black intellectual life during my undergraduate days.
At the time, I was too deeply committed to a rather unspecified pragmatic liberalism to give Baraka’s views honest consideration. Although I viewed Nixon as a racist, I believed that some mainstream liberals were working toward an interracial democratic society. I was quite enamored of Edward Brooke, the black liberal Republican senator from Massachusetts. Not surprisingly, I disliked black nationalism and viewed black separatism as an absurdity. Yet I continued to read Baraka’s political writings, for he played the role of the antagonist who legitimized my establishmentarian liberal sensibilities. Using a faulty logic, weaknesses in his arguments helped me sustain the belief that my political views were more rigorous. Consequently, Baraka’s earliest importance to me was as a political foil. Perhaps none of this would have changed had there not been a war in Vietnam and an establishmentarian American liberalism that could not oppose it on principle. Increasingly enticed by the New Left currents floating around Harvard, I finally realized that my liberalism was as naive as Baraka’s nationalism. For a while, I continued to advocate pragmatic liberalism out of a mind-set akin to “bad faith.” I no longer truly believed but chose to act as if I did in order not to have to reconsider my political ambitions. Too much was at stake to live honestly. My decision to act contrary to my beliefs taught me not only a lot about myself but encouraged me to entertain contradictions when trying to assess the political beliefs and actions of others.
This book is neither a biography of Baraka nor strictly intellectual history. Rather, it should be read as a commentary on the idea of Amiri Baraka as constructed by his contemporaries, his descendants, and, of course, himself. My interests are both scholarly and polemical. I have chosen to interrogate the idea of Amiri Baraka because I believe that it can illuminate some of the crucial political situations confronting twentieth-century Afro-American intellectuals. Besides having a distinctive approach to political engagement, Baraka was a defining figure of a crucial moment in Afro-American intellectual life. Baraka exemplified those traditional black intellectuals who were trying to navigate the promise of the civil rights movement, the despair that resulted from the popular recognition of its limitations, and the enraged assertiveness that arose among those trying to transcend that movement and its anguish. Baraka’s example is instructive because so many of the dilemmas confronting his generation of black intellectuals can be understood and charted by using as the focal points his life and the accompanying idea of his life.
Baraka’s involvement in politics is significant to me personally not only because it has embellished the canvas on which my intellectual life has been sketched but also because the choices he made influenced the choices I did and did not make. In particular, I want to understand the interaction between an intellectual’s political involvement and the commitment to his or her artistic/intellectual craft. How does one remain involved in communal activities and yet preserve one’s “space” to function as a creative artist or critical intellectual?
I claim no intimate knowledge of Amiri Baraka the man. At no time have I tried to interview him or any of his closest former associates. As a student of American politics, I am under no delusion that the public persona of a political actor reflects his or her interior life. Yet one’s public persona is crucial to determining one’s political significance. For this reason I am primarily interested in the idea of Amiri Baraka, as opposed to the reality of Baraka the man. Having said this, I also want to retreat from its Manichaean implications. After all, the reality of the historical man Baraka and the idea of Baraka are interdependent.
Most of us who have been influenced by Baraka have never had access to his interior life. We must recognize, therefore, that his intentions in writing a certain poem or essay may have been different from its reception by his reading audience. Nonetheless, I assume throughout this study that Baraka’s intentions are crucial to determining the meaning of his written and spoken words. When known, I comment on them. When unknown, I sometimes make educated inferences. In any case, I do not adhere to fashionable claims about the irrelevance of an author’s intentions. In any study of this nature, the author runs the risk of being entrapped in Geertz’s web of culture. I may mistake an involuntary blink of the eyelid for a wink. You, the reader, must be the ultimate judge of my efforts.
I remember my first fifteen-minute conversation with Baraka. It was not a particularly memorable occasion, but it remains fixed in my mind. At the time that we met, I was tinkering with the possibility of discussing him in my dissertation. But what immediately struck me about my first face-to-face encounter with Baraka was his political affect. The setting was the Yale University campus on a fall day during the late 1970s or early 1980s. Baraka, a visiting professor, was strolling past Sterling Library dressed in a Mao cap. The Yale University dining hall workers were on strike. Baraka and I were standing near a picket line outside Berkeley College when an older white man slowly walked past us. I remember Baraka stopping midsentence and derisively proclaiming, “That’s the old fascist Robert Penn Warren.” I was a little surprised by this characterization of the old man, for on several occasions I had engaged in informal chats with him. Our favorite topic of conversation was southern white politicians—usually Earl and Huey Long, Ben Tillman, and, of course, Jimmy Carter. Knowing little about Penn Warren’s past, I decided not to acknowledge Baraka’s statement.
What took place next inspired me to write about the former LeRoi Jones. From inside a small duffel bag drooped over his shoulders, he took out a pack of xeroxed leaflets that he distributed to the workers on the picket line. I cannot remember all of its exact words, but I do remember the leaflet’s strident tone and rhetorical style. To the best of my recollection, the leaflet read: SUPPORT the YALE DINING HALL WORKERS! FAIR WAGES for the WORKING CLASS! CALL for GENERAL STRIKE! SMASH the CAPITALIST STATE! VICTORY to OPPRESSED PEOPLE EVERYWHERE! Underneath these declarations were listed Baraka’s name and party affiliation (Revolutionary something or another). He also listed his phone and office numbers at Yale’s Afro-American studies department as the local headquarters for this party.
After distributing these leaflets, he walked away. Our conversation was over. I stood there looking at the leaflet alongside some black women strikers. One of them shrieked “A communist!” and dropped the paper as if it had been infected with the plague. I stood there fascinated by Baraka’s actions—fascinated because they were so politically inept. If he really wanted to help the workers, his actions did not convey it. I wondered if he had done this just to assuage his conscience, for he was teaching at the very institution that was oppressing these workers, many of whom were black. When later walking away, I laughed not only at the language that always seemed to appear on these sectarian leftist leaflets and posters (as if they were all manufactured by the same sign company) but also because I suspected that Professors Charles Davis and my buddies Skip Gates and John Blassingame would have been shocked to know that their departmental offices housed the local offices of an effort to smash the capitalist state. I couldn’t stop laughing at the prospect that a general strike would emanate from the strike at Yale.
I did not doubt that Baraka was on the right side of this labor conflict. Nor did I question the sincerity of his beliefs in the righteousness of the workers’ cause. I did momentarily wonder whether Baraka was as tactically ignorant as his actions indicated. I concluded that his actions conveyed a complete indifference to the political context, including the workers’ unfamiliarity with him and his unfamiliarity with them. This further led me to wonder whether he was more interested in being seen as on the right side politically than in actually involving himself in their struggle. What does it mean to be self-professed revolutionary if one is so divorced from concerns about political efficacy? I knew then that I would have to include him in my dissertation.
Baraka is a complex figure who can easily be misunderstood and misinterpreted. My book is but one person’s necessarily flawed, critical commentary on another’s life and work. It does not claim to be definitive. Nor do I think that it will finally put to rest the controversies that it describes. Yet I believe that my discussion will raise questions that cannot be ignored when discussing Baraka. I’m even sufficiently confident to believe that I have answered some of these important questions.