Hettie Jones (1934-2024): A Creative Force in Cooper Square
East Village resident Hettie Jones — beloved writer and poet, committed activist for social justice and preservation, and recipient of Village Preservation’s Village Award in 2019 — passed away on August 13, 2024, at the age of 90.
Born in Brooklyn on June 15, 1934, Jones wrote more than 20 books over her long career, including a memoir of the Beat Generation, three volumes of poetry, and publications for children and young adults. Her memoir, How I Became Hettie Jones, details her artistic drive, her challenges as a wife and mother in a bi-racial family in the 1950s and ’60s, tensions with her Jewish family, and the challenge to find her own way as a poet and writer in a literary scene dominated by men.
Those challenges started when Jones went off to Mary Washington College to become a writer, but faced anti-semitism at the Virginia school. “The roommates didn’t want to live with me because I was a Jew,” she said in a 2018 interview. “I grew up fast there but I made the best of the situation.” She later earned a bachelor’s degree in drama from the University of Virginia and pursued postgraduate work at Columbia University. After graduating, she met and married Black poet and fellow writer LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka), a move that made her an outcast in her Jewish family. “I never went back to my home again,” she said, explaining that she was not welcome. She was, however, warmly welcomed by her new in-laws.
The couple moved to Manhattan, living on Morton Street, 14th Street, and eventually at 27 Cooper Square, “the scene of notorious parties” that drew such local artistic talents as jazz musician Cecil Taylor, artist Larry Rivers, filmmaker Jonas Mekas, and writers Allen Ginsberg, Frank O’Hara, and Jack Kerouac. Working from their home, Hettie and LeRoi founded Yugen in 1957, a magazine that published the work of William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and others. She also launched Totem Press, which published poetry by Ginsberg, O’Hara, Gregory Corso, and Gary Snyder. It was a lot of work, but “I just had all of this energy to affect change on the people who held onto the established way of looking at things in literature,” she said in a 2017 interview, “because that was the small world that I could affect.”
The Cooper Square address soon grew into a nexus for writers, artists, and other creatives, and Hettie became a pioneer in the Beat Generation. “It seems to have advanced into the culture as, ‘Oh, the Beats, all they wanted to do is sit and smoke reefer and opine or something like that,” Jones said in 2018. “But that’s not at all what it was like. People had serious discussions about politics and injustice.” Later in the 1960s, the house became a focal point for the Black Arts Movement, an American literary movement to advance social engagement.
Jones and Bakara broke up in the 1960s, but she continued to live in the East Village apartment for decades. In 2007, she faced a battle to save her home after a hotel developer announced plans for the 22-story Cooper Square Hotel that would include demolition of the 1845 Greek Revival house at 27 Cooper Square. Hettie decided to fight, convincing the hotel’s owners that the building’s age and artistic heritage were worth preserving. They opted to spare the structure and adapt its lower two floors for corporate headquarters. She also convinced the hotel — today known as the Standard — to reinstall the vintage stained glass window above the entrance door, which had been removed years earlier.
In 2017, Jones joined Village Preservation to unveil a plaque commemorating the lives and legacies at 27 Cooper Square (watch the video here and see photos here)— her own, her neighbors, and the many guests who contributed to this “laboratory for artistic, literary and political currents.”
Hettie was a force to be reckoned with, and she will be missed in her East Village neighborhood and beyond.