Many of us who knew John Sinclair have a tale or two to tell, and one of mine began in 1965 when I met him and members of his “Guitar Army” at the Detroit Artists Workshop. It would be redundant here to repeat what Lee DeVito has done so well in these pages, capturing those episodes of his life, including his managing of the rock band MC5, his joint encounter with an undercover cop, leading the White Panther Party, his literary corpus of poems, essays, and journalism. Three photos keep him forever in focus for me — one of them is in my book Black Detroit, where John is almost unseen, standing in back of me, U.S. Rep. John Conyers, and others during a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Detroit Jazz Center, a concept essentially envisioned by John. This image was captured by Leni Sinclair, his wife.
Another photo is of John outside the Drome Lounge in 1965 waiting to hear Yusef Lateef. Again Leni is the photographer, and here his nonconformist development was still in progress. The third shot is of John in full iconoclastic bloom, a joint clutched in his mouth, two fingers hoisted in a peace sign.
In 1977, when my 12-year stint as a student and teacher at Wayne State University came to an end, John offered me a position at the Allied Artists Association where we, along with several devoted workers, began coordinating activities that would lead to various projects in community and educational ventures, most notably the creation of the Strata Concert Gallery and a jazz curriculum at Oberlin College. I often watched him through a haze of reefer smoke, pounding away on a typewriter, faster with his two fingers than most with all their digits in play. One evening in 1984, he asked me to join him to catch Michael Jackson’s Victory tour at the Pontiac Silverdome; it was, like many of my ventures with him, unforgettable. By this time he was deeply involved in the development of a genre of music projects and publications, notably the Detroit Sun and later the Detroit Metro Times.
For the most part, John was a poet, and nothing personifies more than his poem published in For Malcolm, a tribute that made one of the lone white contributors to the book. In 2017, I was part of a delegation invited to Ghana, and when we had a brief stop in Amsterdam, where John was living at the time, there was a chance to visit the Anne Frank House. He wasn’t at his usual location, so I had to wait several months later to see him at the rear of the Charles H. Wright Museum in a wheelchair. He was there for my book signing, and almost as inconspicuous as he was in the photo at the Jazz Center.
In short, there was John whose presence was undeniably large and formidable, and another who was monkish and self-effacing, willing to work quietly behind the curtain, drafting a poem or an article. I was among that cadre who got to know both of them, both loyally devoted to the preservation and expansion of Black culture.
Funeral services will take place starting at 1 p.m. on Tuesday, April 9 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (4454 Woodward Ave., Detroit). A reception will follow at Trinosophes (1464 Gratiot Ave., Detroit). More information is available at the Lynch & Sons Funeral Directors website.
