Amiri Baraka
Poet and playwright who walked away from New York literary society to become a leading figure in the Black Arts movementAmiri Baraka, who has died aged 79, was an African-American writer who chose separation rather than integration. In 1962, James Baldwin, the most prominent black author of the period, had asked, "Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?" In the middle of the decade, Baraka, at the tim…