Founder and leader of the Black Artists Movement Amiri Baraka has passed away!

 

“Art is a weapon in the struggle of ideas, the class struggle!” (Amiri Baraka)

11.01.2014 | Amiri Baraka (former Leroi Jones), writer, revolutionary, intellectual passed away at the age of 79 on January 9th. Amiri Baraka is not just a name that came forward during the merge of the Afro-American liberation movement in the 1950-1960`s, he also gave significant contribution to the revolutionary art in North America. Amiri`s son Ras Baraka gave an official statement saying that his father hat ben in hospital since December 21st and that he had passed away on January 9th.

Amiri Baraka was considered an international figure in everything from Marxist thought to African independence and is known as the father of the Black Arts Movement, which helped move multiculturalism into the artistic mainstream. He was the chair of the Congress of African Peoples and founded numerous Newark-based political and cultural groups, which did everything from help elect the city’s first black mayor to push for more arts in the schools.

Baraka was born in 1934 and from young age on he met the racist and discriminative policies of the US state, he found his passion in writing especially by writing screenplays. He became famous in 1964 with the play “the Dutchman” and “the slave”. He also published the book a nation within a nation.

The same year he founded the Black Artists Repertory Theater in Harlem. In his plays he handled topics concerning the country and the World. He actively participated inside the black liberation movement and also many times was the target of the state.

In a speech he said: “The attempt to divide art and politics is a bourgeois which says good poetry, art, cannot be political, but since everything is political, even an artist or work that claims not to have any politics is making a political statement by that act.”

We will remember Amiri Baraka with respect to his live full of revolutionary art and struggle, we extend our condolences to his comrades, friends and family relatives.

 

ATIK ENILKOM