Papers of Amiri Baraka, Poet Laureate of the Black Power Movement
Amiri Baraka is the author of over 40 books of essays, poems, drama, and music history and criticism- he is a poet icon and revolutionary political activist. As a young man in the 1960s, Baraka (then known as LeRoi Jones) galvanized a second Black Renaissance, the Black Arts movement. The ideological and political transformations of Amiri Baraka from a Beat poet in Greenwich Village into a militant political activist in Harlem and Newark was paradigmatic for the Black Revolt of the 1960s. This collection of Amiri Baraka materials was made available by Dr Komozi Woodard. Dr Woodard collected these documents during his career as an activist in Newark, New Jersey. The collection consists of rare works of poetry, organizational records, print publications, over one hundred articles, poems, plays, and speeches by Baraka, a small amount of personal correspondence, and oral histories. The collection has been arranged into eighteen series and covers issues such as Baraka's involement in the politics in Newark, N.J., as well as in Black Power movement organizations such as the Congress of African People, the National Black Conference movement, and the Black Women's United Front.