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Newark Mayor Ras Baraka Remembers His Father Amiri Baraka's 'Incredible' Legacy

Newark Mayor Remembers His Father Amiri Baraka's 'Incredible' Legacy
Rahel Gebreyes

Poet, playwright and professor Amiri Baraka was an important figure in the Black Arts Movement, known for his firey and outspoken demeanor before his death in 2014. His son, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who confirmed his father's death to the public last year, joined HuffPost Live last week and reflected on his powerful legacy.

The mayor remembered his father's brave work, which championed the black experience and was notoriously divisive amongst critics. "My father was an incredible man. He was outstanding, and the kind of impact that he's had on Newark is going to be felt for centuries," Ras told host Marc Lamont Hill.

He also explained the power of art -- everything from prose to poetry -- in effecting social change.

"Some of the problems that we have can begin being addressed by art," Ras said. "People don't necessarily believe or can't see that. I think you do better dropping a thousand artists into a community than a thousand cops. So I think [my father's] impact, even on my personal life, has been great."

Watch the full HuffPost Live conversation with Newark mayor Ras Baraka here.

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Before You Go

Famous Playwrights And Their TV Soulmates
Oscar Wilde/Mad Men(01 of06)
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The glamour, the banter, the covert homosexuality -- there's a lot in common between AMC's prettiest show and the works of Oscar Wilde, a playwright who liked pretty things. Wilde was famously an advocate of aestheticism, inscribing his seminal novel "The Picture Of Dorian Gray" with the statement: "All art is quite useless," a dramatic way of saying that what's compelling to look at needn't serve any useful purpose. If that isn't a defense of the advertising industry, we don't know what is. Then there's the overt link: Don Draper fled his hometown of Bunbury for a new life, a nod to the code word Wilde's male leads coin in "The Important Of Being Earnest" to reference their duplicity. (credit:Wikimedia)
Wendy Wasserstein/Girls(02 of06)
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Read the New York Times obituary for Wendy Wasserstein -- a playwright born to wealthy parents in Brooklyn -- and just try not to think of that other child of privilege from the Big Apple, Lena Dunham. From the article's headline ("Her Plays Spoke To A Generation") to the description of Wasserstein's heroines ("intelligent and successful but also riddled with self-doubt"), it all sounds like one of those early bright-eyed "Girls" paeans. Ok, Dunham's "Girls" persona isn't exactly successful yet, but considering how close to home the show's sourcing starts we're pretty sure it'll happen for Hannah soon. (credit:AP)
Mary Chase/Wilfred(03 of06)
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Mary Chase wrote "Harvey," a Pultizer-winning play (turned 1950 Jimmy Stewart film) about an eccentric man whose best friend is a six foot tall imaginary bunny. In FX's "Wilfred," Elijah Wood plays a depressive who can't shake the vision that his neighbor's dog is an Australian dude in a dog suit. This playwright/TV connection may be only fur-deep, but you can't deny it. (credit:Wikimedia)
Tom Stoppard/Arrested Development(04 of06)
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A self-described "language nerd," Czech-born British playwright Tom Stoppard is known for his dense and clever thought experiments, exemplified in his career-making recast of two minor "Hamlet" characters as leads in "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead." We'd have no trouble imagining him penning the fast-paced wordplay of "Arrested Development," a show that revels in knotty, knotty plots (absurdist Charlize Theron era strikes us as just right). (credit:Amazon/AP)
Shakespeare/Modern Family(05 of06)
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We know it's inviting criticism to pair Shakespeare with any modern creation, except maybe the only show people get really poetic about, "The Wire." But hear us out: Shakespeare was one of the most popular entertainers of his time. "Modern Family" sets the bar for widely appealing fare these days, and while it's got nothing on a Shakespearean tragedy, its multi-predicament-into-happy-ending formula makes it ABC's half-hour weekly update of "A Comedy Of Errors." (credit:AP)
Tennessee Williams/Six Feet Under(06 of06)
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Tennessee Williams loved his dysfunctional families -- take the household in "The Glass Menagerie," where the places of honor are reserved for an absentee father and a collection of glass figurines. Meanwhile, HBO's long-running series "Six Feet Under" is nothing if not proof that family dysfunction makes for great TV. We have no doubt Williams' Southern gothic tastes would gel with the show's funeral home backdrop, although he might move the Fishers down a few states. (credit:Wikimedia/AP)
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