Curtains for LeRoi

LeRoi Jones, 33, the snarling laureate of Negro revolt, has distilled his rage against white America in poems and plays whose spectrum has room only for black. "The Black Artist must teach the White Eyes their deaths," Jones writes. And when Newark, his birthplace, was aflame with Negro rioting last July, Jones appeared bent on augmenting his words with action. Heading into the eye of the violence, police testified, Jones had concealed a brace of pearl-handled .32-cal. revolvers beneath the dashboard of his green camper bus and under the folds of his multihued African dashike tunic.

Last week, with a New Jersey courtroom for a stage, Jones demonstrated that he had lost none of his talent for theatrical invective. "You are not a righteous judge!" the defendant bellowed at Essex County Judge Leon Kapp, who sentenced him to a near maximum 2 1/2-to-3-year prison term and a fine of $1,000 for illegally possessing the guns. "You represent a crumbling structure of society!" yelled Jones, who had earlier earned a 30-day contempt sentence for his outbursts in court.

Judge Kapp would have none of it. "I believe you were an active participant to burn Newark," he told the unrepentant author, and then cited a poem published in last December's Evergreen Review in which Jones exhorted Negroes to "smash the window at night (these are magic actions) .. . Just take what you want. Take their lives if need be, but get what you want." "You are sick," lectured the judge. "Not as sick as you," shot back Jones before leaving for Trenton state prison.

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