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Baraka, Amiri [n¨Ĥ Everett LeRoi Jones] (b. 1934), playwright. The most radical and influential AfricanİAmerican writer of the 1960s, he first was noticed (under the name of LeRoi Jones) with Dutchman (1964), an explosive oneİact allegory about a sensuous white woman who teases and taunts a black student on a subway train before killing him. Baraka`s other significant drama was Slave Ship (1967) where actors and audience experience the Atlantic crossing of a colonial slaveİ rade vessel. He changed his name and mission in the late 1960s, advocating theatre as a weapon against white supremacy, and his works inspired a generation of African American writers.