1 Amiri Baraka Early life 1934–1965

1980–2014[edit]

In 1980 Baraka published an essay in the Village Voice that was titled Confessions of a Former Anti-Semite. Baraka insisted that a Village Voice editor titled it and not himself. In the essay Baraka went over his life history, including his marriage to Hettie Cohen, who was Jewish. He stated that after the assassination of Malcolm X he found himself thinking, "As a Black man married to a white woman, I began to feel estranged from her ... How could someone be married to the enemy?" He eventually divorced Hettie and left her with their two bi-racial daughters. In the essay Baraka went on to say
We also know that much of the vaunted Jewish support of Black civil rights organizations was in order to use them. Jews, finally, are white, and suffer from the same kind of white chauvinism that separates a great many whites from Black struggle. ... these Jewish intellectuals have been able to pass over into the Promised Land of American privilege.
In the essay he also defended his position against Israel, saying, "Zionism is a form of racism." Near the end of the essay Baraka stated the following:
Anti-Semitism is as ugly an idea and as deadly as white racism and Zionism ...As for my personal trek through the wasteland of anti-Semitism, it was momentary and never completely real. ... I have written only one poem that has definite aspects of anti-Semitism...and I have repudiated it as thoroughly as I can.^[58]
The poem Baraka referenced was "For Tom Postell, Dead Black Poet", which contained lines including
...Smile jew. Dance, jew. Tell me you love me, jew. I got something for you ... I got the extermination blues, jewboys. I got the hitler syndrome figured ... So come for the rent, jewboys ... one day, jewboys, we all, even my wig wearing mother gonna put it on you all at once.^[8][58]

Baraka addressing the Malcolm X Festival from the Black Dot Stage in San Antonio Park, Oakland, California, while performing with Marcel Diallo and his Electric Church Band
During the 1982–83 academic year, Baraka returned to Columbia University as a visiting professor, teaching a course entitled "Black Women and Their Fictions". After becoming a full professor of African Studies at Stony Brook in 1985, Baraka took an indefinite visiting appointment in Rutgers University's English department in 1988; over the next two years, he taught a number of courses in African American literature and music. Although Baraka sought a permanent, tenured appointment at the rank of full professor in early 1990 (in part due to the proximity between the University's campus in New Brunswick, New Jersey and his home in Newark), he did not attain the requisite two-thirds majority of the senior faculty in a contentious 9–8 vote that favored his appointment. Baraka would go on to collectively liken the committee to an "Ivy League Goebbels" while also characterizing the senior faculty as "powerful Klansmen", leading to a condemnation from department chair Barry Qualls.^[59] Thereafter, Baraka was nominally affiliated with Stony Brook as professor emeritus of Africana Studies until his death. In 1987, together with Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison, he was a speaker at the commemoration ceremony for James Baldwin.
In 1989 Baraka won an American Book Award for his works as well as a Langston Hughes Award. In 1990 he co-authored the autobiography of Quincy Jones, and in 1998 he was a supporting actor in Warren Beatty's film Bulworth. In 1996, Baraka contributed to the AIDS benefit album Offbeat: A Red Hot Soundtrip produced by the Red Hot Organization.
In July 2002, Baraka was named Poet Laureate of New Jersey by Governor Jim McGreevey. The position was to be for two years and came with a $10,000 stipend.^[60] Baraka held the post for a year, during which time he was mired in controversy, including substantial political pressure and public outrage demanding his resignation. During the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Stanhope, New Jersey, Baraka read his 2001 poem on the September 11th attacks "Somebody Blew Up America?", which was criticized for anti-Semitism and attacks on public figures. Because there was no mechanism in the law to remove Baraka from the post, and he refused to step down, the position of state poet laureate was officially abolished by the State Legislature and Governor McGreevey.^[61]
Baraka collaborated with hip-hop group The Roots on the song "Something in the Way of Things (In Town)" on their 2002 album Phrenology.
In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante included Amiri Baraka on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.^[62]
In 2003, Baraka's daughter Shani, aged 31, and her lesbian partner, Rayshon Homes, were murdered in the home of Shani's sister, Wanda Wilson Pasha, by Pasha's ex-husband, James Coleman.^[63][64] Prosecutors argued that Coleman shot Shani because she had helped her sister separate from her husband.^[65] A New Jersey jury found Coleman (also known as Ibn El-Amin Pasha) guilty of murdering Shani Baraka and Rayshon Holmes, and he was sentenced to 168 years in prison for the 2003 shooting.^[66]
His son, Ras J. Baraka (born 1970), is a politician and activist in Newark, who served as principal of Newark's Central High School, as an elected member of the Municipal Council of Newark (2002–06, 2010–present) representing the South Ward. Ras J. Baraka became Mayor of Newark on July 1, 2014. (See 2014 Newark mayoral election.)