Amiri Baraka at San Francisco State University: March 2, 1977

Amiri Baraka opens by noting he'd thought he was to give a lecture, then saw a newspaper notice that he would be reading poetry. Noting his reading later that same evening, at New College of California (see related program), he proposes to talk first and then read some poems. 

"There is no art that is outside society..." He procedes to talk on the place of art in society, countering the "bourgeois line" that seeks to disconnect art from society. Living in capitalist society, the artist is pitted against the ruling class and must act on behalf of "the great masses of society" who are severed from the means of production and the wealth extracted from their own labor.

"There's no such thing as being a-political.... Art must be a weapon of revolutionary struggle." He addresses the student audience, regarding the aim of the university to educate them into the managerial middle class as apologists for capitalism as the only way an economy and society can function. He advocates for study groups to counter bourgeois education. 

Saying "we made mistakes in the Sixties," Baraka indicates the turn away from "cultural nationalism" to Marxism-Leninism and the need to build a revolutionary party. He invites students to purchase some literature and talk afterward. 

The second half of the program is devoted to Baraka reading new poetry. Noting "actually the poems not saying nothing different from what I just said," he reads from "a book called Hard Facts...and some things written after that," opening with a poem for the recent inauguration of "millionaire capitalist peanut pusher" Jimmy Carter as US President.