A Conversation with Amiri Baraka: Politics, Class Struggle and Black Culture (January 5, 1996)—A Retro-engagement

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 1996 Scot Brown interviewed the prolific twentieth and twenty-first century writer, scholar and activist Amiri Baraka (formerly known as LeRoi Jones). Their dialogue focused on a crucial period in the history of the Black Arts and Black Power movements, between the latter 1960s and early-1970s. During that period Baraka’s organization, Committee For a Unified Newark (CFUN), participated in an alliance of Black cultural nationalist organizations that was heavily influenced by Maulana Karenga, chairman of the Us Organization. Karenga was a self-identified cultural nationalist theoretician and activist who formulated the concept of Kawaida (tradition and reason). The seven-day holiday known as Kwanzaa is the most well-known example of Kawaida in the form of a cultural practice. This interview highlights the political dimensions Baraka’s alliance with cultural nationalist leaders and organizations. From 1968 through 1972 Baraka drew on Karenga’s organizing strategies but subsequent experiences led him to reassess cultural nationalism. Brown’s interview, then, focuses on a significant transitional period in Baraka’s career when he, through praxis, became critical of cultural nationalism and moved toward a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology of revolutionary change.