Amiri Baraka , also called Imamu Amiri Baraka, original name Everett Leroy Jones, called Leroy Jones, Leroy later changed to LeRoi (born October 7, 1934, Newark, New Jersey, U.S.—died January 9, 2014, Newark), American poet and playwright who published provocative works that assiduously presented the experiences and suppressed anger of black Americans in a white-dominated society.

After graduating from Howard University (B.A., 1953), Jones served in the U.S. Air Force but was dishonourably discharged after three years because he was suspected (wrongly at that time) of having communist affiliations. He attended graduate school at Columbia University, New York City, and founded (1958) the poetry magazine Yugen, which published the work of Beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac; he edited the publication with his wife, Hettie Cohen. He began writing under the name LeRoi Jones in the late 1950s and produced his first major collection of poetry, Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, in 1961. His first significant play, Dutchman (1964; film 1967), which recounted an explosive confrontation on a train between a black intellectual and a white woman who murders him, won the 1964 Obie Award for best Off-Broadway American play.

Following the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, Jones became increasingly focused on black nationalism, That year he left his white Jewish wife and moved to Harlem. There he founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre, which staged many of his works prior to its closure in the late 1960s. In 1968 he adopted the name Amiri Baraka, and his writings became more divisive, prompting some to applaud his courage and others to deplore sentiments that could foster hate. In the mid-1970s he became a Marxist, though his goals remained similar. “I [still] see art as a weapon and a weapon of revolution,” he said. “It’s just now that I define revolution in Marxist terms.” His work from this period was seen by some as becoming increasingly homophobic and anti-Semitic. His position as poet