Free Republic

Amiri Baraka died Thursday after weeks of failing health, a family spokeperson confirmed. He was 79. A playwright, poet, critic and activist, Baraka was one of the most prominent and controversial African American voices in the world of American letters. He was born Everett LeRoi Jones on Oct. 7, 1934, in Newark, N.J. A gifted student, he graduated from high school two years early and went to college at New York University and Howard University. After serving in the Air Force for more than two years, Baraka -- then Jones -- was dishonorably discharged for reading communist texts.

New Jersey's poet laureate Amiri Baraka, who wrote a poem blaming Israel for the September 11 attack, is refusing to resign despite calls from the governor, James McGreevey, and charges of "anti-New Jersey, anti-American and anti-Semitic venom" by the local Anti-Defamation League. Last week, McGreevey called on Baraka, who was appointed in August, to resign after the poet laureate read out a work entitled Somebody Blew Up America, at the Dodge Poetry Festival in Waterloo, New Jersey. The poem, which reportedly earned Baraka boos from audience members, prompted the ADL to categorize it as the same kind of anti-Semitic hate...

LeRoi Jones, aka Amiri Baraka, has been asked to resign as poet laureate of New Jersey. He refuses. Hmm. The governor wants him gone because of what have been interpreted as anti-Semitic statements in his poem - if one wants to call it that - "Somebody Blew Up America," written after Sept. 11, 2001. The governor has it all wrong. Jones should not be asked to resign. Those who appointed him should resign - if they have read his work over the last 35 years. It is an incoherent mix of racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, black nationalism, anarchy and ad hominem...