The following work examines black nationalism and the dramatic works of the poet and playwright Amiri Baraka, born Everett LeRoi Jones. The work critically examines the claim that the black community in the United States forms an independent entity, which was also referred to as an independent nation. Claims that black people in America form an independent nation were opposed mainly by Marxist thinkers, but the Communist Party in the 1920s formed the position that black people as a nation in America have the right to self-determination. Black nationalists, especially cultural nationalists, argued that black people in America were united by the common experience of slavery and that as such they had their own culture, on the basis of which we could speak of black people as an independent nation. One of the most important black nationalists in the 1960s was Amiri Baraka, who belonged to the stream of cultural nationalists. With his dramatic works, which, among other things wanted to engage black audiences in political action, he tried to help shape black culture and inspire black people to unite. Amiri Baraka advocated the idea of black art, which must be distinguished from white art in that it is not apolitical and that it helps build community.
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