Seventy-one years ago in Newark, New Jersey, Coyette and Anna Lois Jones gave birth to Everett LeRoi Jones. Today, Everett LeRoi Jones is Amiri Baraka, a controversial poet, playwright, and writer (Magill 93). The many obstacles and situations he faced in movement along with many others. Evidently shown in his poetry, Baraka reveals his feelings towards certain aspects of life he faces or observes (Magill 94).
LeRoi Jones graduated from Barringer High School in 1951 and attended Rutgers University. He later transferred to Columbia University, then to Howard University where he studied with Sterling A. Brown, a famous poet. Directly after college, Jones served in the US Air Force with no intention of becoming a poet. Later on, during her service, however, he realized his passion for poetry and was determined to become a poet after he was released.
Pursuing his career in Greenwich Village, NY, he started off by editing Yugen, a poetry magazine with his wife, Hettie Cohen, a Caucasian woman (Magill 93). With her, he held the lifestyle of a middle class white man. He broke the stereotype of the typical black man.
Later in his life, Jones moved to Harlem where he began to see the hard life he could have been living had he lived like a typical black man. Black people were being oppressed in society, and he finally decided to fight along with other people to end the discrimination.
After divorcing his first wife and severing relationships with his white associates, he married a black woman, Sylvia Robinson (later “Amina Baraka”) and started a new family in 1966. He came in touch with his nationality in a strong way. Around the same time Baraka’s view changed on blacks and white, he converted to a different sect of Islam, and his name was changed from LeRoi Jones to Imamu Amiri Baraka (Imamu means “spiritual one” in Swahili) at the age of 34. He took part in rebellions against racism, and his poetry reflected upon much of what was going on in that...