It was challenging to meet and interview this icon who had an early impact on me beginning in my late teens (but not the similarities of our names!). I have always been an artist who walked different avenues: through The Souls of Black Folk, and later my own show, Black Air, I had a forum and audience for everything concerning events in Africa and the African Diaspora, from covering Oakland’s African Liberation Day (the largest of all the nationwide ALD gatherings being held then) to the astrology of Martin Luther King, Jr.; I was a mixed media sculptor, a carver of wood and stone, and an occult artist, an astrologer who had done a few thousand charts, read tarot, and practiced other oracular and divination techniques.

In the following I am presenting excerpts from both interviews, with summaries of some of them for the sake of any technical glitches; some of the summaries are for parts that I did not include here.

The first interview was conducted on August 13, 1974. I went to Newark at the Congress of African People headquarters (CAP). At that time Amiri was approaching 40, and after knowing and being around him these past years, he sounds "young" in this tape! From his analyses and the terminology he used it is now evident that his social perspective was based on Marxist ideology way before the media claims that he announced his “conversion.” He made clear distinctions between what he felt that black people needed and what he saw compromising black leaders not doing, “progressives” and mainstream alike. He can be heard occasionally thumping the table as he speaks. Of all the things that he said in the interview, the one that stayed entrenched in my memory for decades but is hardly audible in the tape, was his response to my opening question “How you doin’?” “Genuine," was his answer. So true: in a one-word response he described what and who he was in a unique and powerful way. Here are excerpts and summaries of that interview:

I opened with questions about the 6-PAC. He said that they took the position that Pan Africansim could not be separated from the international class struggle or from the struggle for international socialism throughout the world. And he discussed the difference of focus between the previous Pan African Congress held in 1945, which was anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist, and the 6-PAC's addition of anti-neocolonialism, which reflected the current challenges that Africa faced. He drew distinctions between progressive and neo-colonial African and Caribbean governments and neocolonial governments who were selling their autonomy for the corporate gains of multinationals. No “progressives” attended the 6-PAC from the English-speaking Caribbean, and the United States government tried to prevent US progressives from attending, but the Tanzanian government, who was the host, put a block on those machinations.

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When we discussed Kawaida Towers, CAP's housing project, he became enlivened as he described the situation from a socialistic perspective:

He bemoaned the incarceration of Ron Karenga, which had gone into its 3rd year and the conflicts between US and the Panthers. He felt there must be some kind of conspiracy to keep him locked up.

Even though the assassinations of Malcolm, Martin, Medgar Evers, and the destruction of the Panthers were lethal setbacks, he felt that the ensuing awareness and dialectics as a result of those tragedies led blacks to a more progressive consciousness during the 70s than that of the 60s.

Amiri Baraka slammed “bourgeois democracy,” and faulted some black leaders for being more concerned with their positions and not creating programs that helped black people, like Mayor Kenneth Gibson of Newark, Charles Diggs, or for embracing Republicans, like Shirley Chisholm who told blacks to vote for Gerald Ford. He said that if a revolutionary becomes mayor, his goal should not be merely to obtain that position, but to use it to push for new programs that benefit people. It would be a revolutionary necessity to form coalitions with progressives of other races and communities. Note that his son Ras, currently a Newark City Councilman and a high school principal, who was 4 at the time of the interview, is now running for mayor there.

In answer to my question about the role of the artist in the struggle, Amiri Baraka thought that it could be of great use but many artists have a bourgeois background and concept of what art is and that an artist should use their work to raise the consciousness of the people. I mentioned it had been said he should write a new US national anthem, and that James Brown should do the music, he chuckled slightly:

Concerning the “new’ religions and alternative forms of spirituality that blacks were getting into from the Yoruba religion to astrology, Amiri Baraka felt those pursuits’ influences would largely be negative. Especially for intellectuals it represents a real lack of “clarity,” because religion is a diversion, that the material world will raise the spiritual. He understood religion because he had “come out of the spiritual,” and that CAP was about going beyond the metaphysical. More people can be united around material concerns than religion. Religion at best is a secondary concern, and that we should make our struggle a material struggle, and take it away from metaphysical references. Of course I had my ideas about this that were different than his, being an astrologer, but as an interviewer I was more interested in what he thought:

Other topics that we discussed but are not among these segments of the interviews were: The Newark Cab Drivers Association had been formed with the purpose of creating a union for the cab drivers. The whole concept of this was clearly socialist, with the idea that workers such as the cab drivers had to be engaged class struggle.

About writing projects; when I asked him if he was working on any new plays he said: “I’ve just finished working on a novel,” but he understands the publisher “Don’t like it;” he completed a book about Newark that’s supposed to come out that year published by Howard University Press; a book of essays that CAP is putting out; they worked on some of his earlier plays, and a new play about Mayor Gibson that was done that year; “And I have to write another play soon…”

This photo appeared in the New York Times article, Baraka Abandons 'Racism' as Ineffective And Shifts to 'Scientific Socialism' of Marx It was taken at the Congress of African People in Newark. It is interesting that images of Marx, Lenin, and Mao are center and above the stage with images of African American leaders (the left figure is unidentifiable), Malcolm X, Amiri on the right, with Martin Luther King at the far right are to the side and underneath them.

Later that year he renounced Black Nationalism, and in a December 27th New York Times article by Joseph F. Sullivan titled, Baraka Abandons ‘Racism’ as Ineffective and Shifts to ‘Scientific Socialism’ of Marx, he stated that Black Nationalism was too narrow to resolve the issues facing the black community.

The Souls of Black Folk's collective’s name was now The Splibs. (Splib is 1950s-60s Mid-western black jargon for African-American, not found in other parts of Africa-America) We had fought the station and succeeded in our struggle for self determination in the media by forming a separate department from the Public Affairs Department. Kunle Mwanga, founder of Earth Art Productions, a cultural activist and music producer and I decided to put together a 4–hour retrospective on Amiri.

I conducted my second interview by phone with Amiri on January 24th, 1975. The show, broadcast on January 26, also included a radio production of The Dutchman and readings of his poetry and essays by performers living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Here are excerpts from the second interview:

"What the article is trying to do is pretend that everything we've been doing for the last 10 years, what we've just said is totally nonsense... What we've said is that as far as ideologically we've developed very definitely to commit ourselves to scientific socialism; that's without a doubt. But at the same time we've tried to make it clear that the reason why we are doing that is because we are committed to the black liberation struggle..."

Amiri and Haki, writer and the publisher and founder of 3rd World Press, later patched things up, collaborating on several projects throughout the years. However, here Amiri's comments are fresh and intense concerning the differences between him and some black leaders at that time.

Socialist that he was, Amiri Baraka supported President Obama in both elections. From his comments here he sees the possibility of a viable alternative presidential candidate, naming Congressman Ron Dellums of Oakland, CA.