The story of how Everett Leroy Jones became Amiri Baraka, from his childhood to the mid '60s, is told through interviews | dG1fTDJ0V25sM0JsQ2M
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00:00 [VIDEO PLAYBACK]
00:07 -Newark, New Jersey became a city of race riots, violence,
00:10 looting, and hate.
00:12 For five days, it was a battleground
00:13 and a looter's paradise.
00:15 Colored citizens clashed with police, National Guardsmen,
00:18 and state troopers.
00:20 24 people were killed and 1,200 injured.
00:23 Nearly half the city was in the grip of terror.
00:26 -We were sitting on a porch talking.
00:29 And then it got real quiet.
00:34 And then I looked up and I saw it
00:36 looked like the sky was glowing.
00:39 And then a guy came running around
00:40 and he says, they're breaking out windows
00:42 on Springfield Avenue.
00:43 They're breaking out windows on Springfield Avenue.
00:46 So we jumped into my new Volkswagen camper bus, me
00:50 and two other guys.
00:51 And we went around to see.
00:52 And man, they were doing it.
00:54 They were ripping the windows out
00:55 and they were setting fire to things.
00:58 So we drove up into the middle of it,
01:01 Belmont and Springfield Avenue.
01:02 And we were circling around, really looking,
01:06 checking it out up close.
01:08 What is a rebellion up close?
01:11 Most people never seen what that looks like.
01:14 But then we started picking up people who were injured.
01:17 Man was shot in the leg.
01:18 I picked him up.
01:18 We put him in a car.
01:20 We took him over to the hospital.
01:21 It was like a war zone in there.
01:24 And over there on Belmont and Spruce,
01:26 they were actually shooting.
01:27 Bam, bam, bam, it pops.
01:30 And then people were returning fire from different places.
01:34 So we drove around in the heat of that,
01:39 got some more people out of the street.
01:44 And then we went to some guy's house.
01:46 It was about after midnight then.
01:48 Stayed there.
01:50 Then we took this one guy home.
01:51 We had stayed out too long.
01:52 The streets were clear then.
01:55 And so here we came across South 7th Street about 1 o'clock
01:59 in the morning.
02:02 And it was absolutely quiet.
02:03 Nobody was on the streets.
02:05 And then we got down about four or five blocks down.
02:09 And I could see all of these red lights down here at the corner.
02:14 There's about five or six police cars down there.
02:19 And we looked at it.
02:24 And I said, you know, stop.
02:28 Because we had thought, wait, one time we were going to break.
02:30 But I said, no, stop.
02:34 They opened the car door.
02:35 And when the door opened, this guy hit me in the head
02:38 with his pistol.
02:39 The 38, choo, choo, split open like an egg.
02:46 I had said to him, though, I said, I know.
02:48 I went to high school with you.
02:49 It was true.
02:51 I can't think of this guy's name.
02:52 But it was an Italian kid I went to high school with.
02:56 He popped my head open and dragged me out of there.
03:01 And then they started beating us with these sticks, man.
03:04 It was like you've never been beat like that in your life.
03:08 I thought I was going to die, actually.
03:10 My whole face was covered with blood.
03:12 It was like warm.
03:13 You know, you have so much blood in your face you can't see.
03:16 And it's warm, your whole face is warm with blood.
03:19 It was all over, blood on my hands, my shirt, everywhere.
03:22 And they were just still beating me.
03:25 And the only thing that stopped them
03:26 was the people up in the window started throwing stuff at them
03:29 and screaming at them.
03:29 So they put me in a police car.
03:30 I bled over.
03:31 The guy says, get him out of there.
03:32 I bled over his police car.
03:34 So the guy throws me out of the police car.
03:39 And that really saved my life.
03:41 They put me in a paddy wagon.
03:43 And this one sick cop says, yes, I'm the devil.
03:46 Yes, I'm the devil.
03:49 I was screaming.
03:51 At the time, remember, I was screaming, Allah, uakba.
03:53 You know, Allah is the greatest.
03:55 But that was like some--
03:56 I mean, I was not a Muslim, but I had, you know,
04:00 at least been close to it based on the Malcolm thing.
04:04 But that's all I can remember, screaming,
04:06 because I had to say something because they were killing me.
04:09 You know, and I was just trying to scream
04:11 some kind of defiance at them.
04:13 Come out, niggas, niggas, niggas.
04:15 Come out.
04:16 Help us stop the devil.
04:18 Help us build a new world.
04:20 Niggas, come out.
04:22 Brothers are we, with you and your sons.
04:25 Your daughters are ours.
04:26 And we are all the same, all the blackness from one black Allah.
04:32 [MUSIC PLAYING]
04:35 (dramatic music)