Amiri Baraka

American playright and Separatist Black leader, he was born to a social worker mom and a postal worker dad.

He attended Rutgers University but left without graduation. He changed his name to LeRoi Jones in 1952. Two years later, in 1954 he enlisted in the Army but was dishonorably discharged after getting into an altercation with a superior officer. He moved to Greenwich Village where he became involved with jazz musicians and writers; in 1958 he founded Totem Press which published some of the Beat Generation writers like Jack Kerouac. That year he married Hettie Cohen. The couple jointly edited Yugen literary magazine until 1963. A trip to Cuba evoked the activist in him and he began writing controversial political and social commentary and plays. In 1967 he adopted the African name Imamu Ameer Baraka, which he later changed to Amiri Baraka. At around this time he divorced Hetty and left her and their two children. In 1966 he remarried, this time to a woman who took the name of Amina Baraka. A year later he began teaching. With his controversial anti-Semitic views which he later denounced, he was active in the Black Muslim movement, embracing Islam and calling for an end to the oppression of Black people. He continued writing and in 1989 won an American Book Award and a Langston Hughes Award. He has also appeared in several films.

His 31-year-old daughter was murdered in 2003 in New Jersey.

Baraka died at Beth Israel Medical Center in Newark, New Jersey on 9 January 2014.