NYU Memorial for Jayne Cortez and Amiri Baraka

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Jayne Cortez (1934 - 2012)
Jayne Cortez, poet, activist, independent publisher, and performing and visual artist, was born in Huachuca, Arizona in 1934. She is the author of ten books, and her works has been translated into twenty-eight languages. Some of her major titles include On the Imperial Highway: New and Selected Poems (2008), The Beautiful Book (2007), Jazz Fan Looks Back (2002), Somewhere in Advance of Nowhere (1997), Coagulations: New and Selected Poems (1982). Not only was she a skilled technician of language, but one of the world’s major Afro-Jazz and political visionaries, surrealist poets, whose dynamic charisma and explosive delivery of her work thrilled audiences worldwide.

Jayne Cortez was a committed Pan Africanist, a Women’s / Human Rights activist, and was a member of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Mississippi, registering Black voters, in 1963 and 1964, during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Sister Jayne Cortez was major Djali/Griot of the modern African post-colonial experience, and a major writer in the U.S. and African world. Historically she is a “Sister” to the great Negritude poets, such as Aimé Césaire and colleagues. We must remember her as one of the major voices and visionaries of our time.

Amiri Baraka (1934 - 2014)
Amiri Baraka started out as a beat poet in Greenwich Village in New York City. His 1960 trip to Cuba after Fidel Castro came to power had a radical impact on his life. As poet, author, and, playwright, Amiri Baraka built a national and international reputation as artist. After the assassination Malcolm X’s in 1965 he moved to Harlem where he founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School. As one of the major figures along with Larry Neal, Sonia Sanchez, and, Askia Toure, they are regarded as the architects of the Black Arts Movement that worked in tandem with the emerging Black Power Movement. He became a leading force in the African Liberation Support Committee. Amiri eventually moved back to Newark, NJ, where he and his wife Amina founded the Committee for Unified Newark and the Congress of African People. He published several journals and the newspaper Unity and Struggle that used Marxism-Leninism to inform the Black Liberation Movement.

We should remember Amiri for his contributions to not only the Black Liberation Movement, but for his struggle to connect the national question of Black self-determination to the international class question of capitalist and imperialist exploitation of working people. Amiri was not born a revolutionary. It was his engagement as an artist who grew more conscious of how oppressive a capitalism society functions. Instead of buying into the privilege of a celebrated artist, Amiri embraced the black masses bringing his artistic and intellectual skills into his community giving voice and advocating for democratic Black power. Throughout the various phases of his life, Amiri continued to grow politically grappling with how to fuse the struggle for Black liberation and struggle for socialism in America. By struggling to take up different questions and changing his outlook and his own practice made him a transformational revolutionary, someone who was self-critical and reflective about building a new society.