In fact, he identified himself entirely with it, even in his own self-reflection. In the reflective poem "leroy," published in 1969 under his newly adopted name Amiri Baraka, a nostalgic comment on his mother becomes a lofty vision of himself as the bearer of black wisdom -- that "strong nigger feeling" (5) -- from his ancestors forward to the next generation. He refers to this legacy that he is passing on as his "consciousness" (11), an indication that he had by this point in his life entirely adopted his race as his identity.

This wholehearted self-identification with race, along with a keen awareness of his cultural power as a poet, combined to create an artist absorbed with his own capacity for social comment and change. After the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, Baraka became disenchanted with the somewhat passive anti-establishment attitudes of the Greenwich Village artistic community, and moved...
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