LeRoi Jones to Amiri Baraka: A Philosophical Journey of a Black Author
Keywords:
Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones, Black Arts Movement, 1960s, Black Nationalism, racial segregation, African American cultureAbstract
This text examines three early writings by LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, a radical Black intellectual whose stance toward the role of African Americans within American society underwent a significant change in the early 1960s. He belongs to a generation of Black authors who began to publicly advocate the use of violence in the struggle for an overall improvement of the socioeconomic status of African Americans. Heavily influenced early on by the Beat Generation and liberalism of Greenwich Village, Baraka emerged in the sixties as perhaps the most powerful literary voice of Black intellectual circles in the United States. In particular three of his early texts – Blues People: Negro Music in White America, Dutchman and The System of Dante’s Hell – reflect his views of the African American situation in the context of the 1960s and are analyzed in this paper in terms of the intellectual transformation of Baraka from a mere advocate of Black culture to a militant Black Nationalist advocating a revolution against white supremacy.
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