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1 Birth of an Intellectual Journey AMIRI B ARAKA, THE former LeRoi Jones, was born Everett LeRoy Jones in Newark, New Jersey, on October 7, 1934. The son of Coyette (“Coyt”) LeRoy Jones, a postal supervisor, and Anna Lois Russ Jones, a social worker, LeRoy was raised in a stable lower-middle-class, upper-working-class black family.1 Even though his family aspired to the bourgeoisie, Jones was fundamentally shaped throughout his early years by a rather typical American lower-middle-class socialization, with one qualification: He was born and raised black in a significantly racist society. In describing his religious upbringing , Jones provided a glimpse of the black, lower-middle-class world of his youth: My own church in Newark, New Jersey, a Baptist church, has almost no resemblance to the older more traditional Negro Christian churches. The music, for instance, is usually limited to the less emotional white church music, and the choir usually sings Bach or Handel during Christmas and Easter. In response to some of its older “country” members, the church, which was headed by a minister who is the most respected Negro in Newark, has to import gospel groups or singers having a more traditional “Negro” church sound.2 Despite the limited musical offerings of his status-conscious church, Jones was undoubtedly exposed to robust, “traditional Negro” secular music. The Newark of Jones’s early years was a hub of black night life. In Swing City, author Barbara Kukla claims that between 1925 and 1950, Newark was a “thriving mecca of entertainment.”3 A center for jazz, musicians going into and out of New York City performed regularly in Newark. One testimony to this vibrant black musical culture was a black girl born in Newark in 1924 who performed in local night clubs before professionally emerging on the national scene as “the Divine One,” Sarah Vaughan. Certainly, the young Jones must have been exposed to some aspects of this rich musical tradition. Perhaps his love of black music dated from these earliest encounters. For much, if not most, of LeRoy’s youth, the Jones family resided either 21 in black neighborhoods located on the fringe of Italian American neighborhoods or in black enclaves in Italian American neighborhoods. Jones attended predominantly white public schools. When recalling his days at the McKinley and Barringer Schools, Baraka mentions that he was not prepared for the racism there,and he responded to being called nigger by learning curse words in Italian. His outsider status led to the development of a split life between the black playground worlds of his buddies and the hostile white surroundings of these schools. Concerning this dual existence, Baraka surmised, “It must be true, maybe obvious, that the schizophrenic tenor of some of my life gets fielded from these initial sources.”4 After graduating from high school, Jones enrolled in the Newark branch of Rutgers University. He once again found himself in a predominantly white environment. In explaining his year-long stay at Rutgers, one biographer wrote, “The effort to prove himself in an ‘essentially mediocre situation’ and the experience of always being an outsider in any school social activities made him transfer to Howard University.”5 Howard University proved critical to the development of Baraka’s ethnically marginal identity, for at Howard he was exposed to the world of the Negro elite, the authentic “black bourgeoisie.” Long considered the “capstone ” of Negro education, Howard University was the national centerpiece for the education of the black bourgeoisie.Founded in 1866 by General Oliver Howard (head of the Freedman’s Bureau) to educate the former slaves, Howard University was, and continues to be, the best-funded, predominantly black center of higher education because of its direct subsidies from the federal government. By the early twentieth century, Howard had become specifically endowed with the mission of educating the black professional class.6 Through this university came a disproportionate share of the country’s black lawyers, doctors, dentists, ministers, teachers, social workers, and scholars. Except for the sporadic intellectual exchanges in classes taught by Sterling Brown, Nathan Scott, and E. Franklin Frazier, Jones strongly disliked Howard. He considered it anti-intellectual.7 Howard students appeared to be more interested in acquiring the “proper” black bourgeois weltanschauung than in obtaining a serious education. Jones was disgusted by what he thought to be Howard’s educational philosophy. “The Howard thing let me understand the Negro sickness. They teach you to pretend to be white.”8 Theodore Hudson...

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