sentences:  In 1961 Baraka co-authored a "Declaration of Conscience" in support of Fidel Castro's regime.Baraka also was a member of the Umbra Poets Workshop of emerging Black Nationalist writers (Ishmael Reed and Lorenzo Thomas, among others) on the Lower East Side (1962–65).His first book of poems, "Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note," was published in 1961.