In the late 1950s and early 1960s, as LeRoi Jones, Amiri Baraka was living in Greenwich Village and had earned some repute as a jazz critic, playwright, and Late Beat poet. He also became close to the Black Mountain Poets Charles Olson and Robert Creeley. However, during the 1967 Newark Riots, he and several others were stopped, arrested and beaten by the Newark Police. In the ensuing trial, his poem, "Black People" was admitted by the prosecution as evidence that he was fomenting racial unrest.
From the trial's transcript:
"THE COURT: Just a minute. This [the poem's] diabolical prescription
to commit murder and to steal and plunder and other similar evidences"”
DEFENDANT JONES: I'm being sentenced for the poem. Is that what you
are saying?
THE COURT: "”cause one to suspect that you were a participant in
formulating a plot to ignite the spark on the night of July 13, 1967
to burn the City of Newark and that"”
DEFENDANT JONES: You mean, you don't like the poem, in other words..."
Jones was convicted by an all-white jury. However, the case was overturned on appeal. He later changed his name to the Bantu Amiri Baraka and became active in Black Nationalist causes.