Amiri Baraka was born Everett LeRoi Jones on October 7, 1934, to Anna Lois Russ Jones, a social worker, and Coyt Jones, a postal supervisor. Called LeRoi, he grew up in Newark, New Jersey, a gifted student who graduated from high school early and won a scholarship to Rutgers University. He transferred to the predominantly African American Howard University after only one year, however, because he felt too much like an outsider at Rutgers. But he felt equally uneasy at Howard because there, "They teach you how to pretend to be white." From university, Jones went into the Air Force, where he also faced racial oppression. Just as his stint at Howard had taught him about the "Negro sickness" of self-hatred, his experience in the armed forces taught him about the "white sickness" of hating others. Whites infected themselves with mental illness "by having to oppress, by having...