The influential and controversial poet, playwright and essayist Amiri Baraka died Thursday in his hometown of Newark, N.J. He was 79.
Baraka, who was formerly known as LeRoi Jones, was one of the key black literary voices of the 1960s. The political and social views that inspired his writing changed over the years, from his bohemian days as a young man in Greenwich Village, to black nationalism and later years as a Marxist.
Baraka's work was at the forefront of the Black Arts Movement. His play Dutchman won the prestigious Obie Award in 1964 and shocked audiences with its explicit language and rage against the oppression of blacks in America. His writing about jazz and African-American culture, most notably the book Blues People: Negro Music In White America, was highly regarded.
But his detractors accused him at various times of being racist, dangerously militant, homophobic and anti-Semitic. His infamous 2002 poem about the Sept. 11 attacks contained lines that suggested Israeli involvement in the attack on the World Trade Center. Still, as The New York Times' Margalit Fox wrote, "his champions and detractors agreed that at his finest he was a powerful voice on the printed page, a riveting orator in person and an enduring presence on the international literary scene whom — whether one loved or hated him — it was seldom possible to ignore."
Baraka spoke to Fresh Air's Terry Gross in 1986.