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    A Nation Within A Nation Amiri Baraka & Black Power Politics

    University Of North Carolina Press

    Poet and playwright Amiri Baraka is best known as one of the African-American writers who helped ignite the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. This book examines Baraka's cultural approach to Black Power politics and explores his role in the phenomenal spread of black nationalism in the urban centres of late twentieth-century America, including his part in the election of black public officials, his leadership in the Modern Black Convention Movement and his work in housing and community development. Komozi Woodard traces Baraka's transformation from poet to political activist, as the rise of the Black Arts Movement pulled him from political obscurity in the Beat circles of Greenwich Village, swept him into the centre of the Black Power Movement and ultimately propelled him into the ranks of black national political leadership.