I stumbled upon this great conversation from 1971 between Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin. This has been a crummy Black History Month filled with blackface, nooses, racist newspaper editors, and Jussie Smollett. But this conversation between two literary legends is a great way to end the month on a high note.
I won’t say anything else; just watch it.
I always wondered why there hadn’t been a book about the infamous1963 meeting with then-Attorney-general Robert F. Kennedy, writer James Baldwin and other noted black and white entertainers, writers, and activists. I am glad Michael Eric Dyson took on the task of telling the story and putting it in perspective with current events.
A little background here: In 1963 James Baldwin had become the country’s leading black public intellectual. While he had written many books and articles on race over the previous decade, his seminal book, The Fire Next Time, made him into a household name. Kennedy, who had briefly met Baldwin previously, wanted to strategize on improving race relations, but he didn’t want to meet with official talking heads for civil rights groups like Dr. King and Whitney Young of the Urban League.
In May 1963 Kennedy invited to his New York home to have this race discussion Baldwin, as well as other influential African Americans including Harry Belafonte, Lena Horne, Lorraine Hansberry, and a young Freedom Rider named Jerome Smith.
If Kennedy had hoped that these prominent blacks would partake in the politics of respectability, he was sadly mistaken. The conversation went downhill very quickly when Smith said he would never join the military to fight in Cuba in light of the racism blacks deal with in America. Kennedy became indignant and called him unpatriotic.
Sounds familiar?
When I read this, it instantly reminded me of the current conversation around athletes taking the knee when the national anthem is played before a game. Trump and others think that doing this is unpatriotic and don’t understand the full context of this protest. The athletes are not disrespecting the flag, our country, or our military; they are protesting the racial injustices still happening in this country. Specifically, they are protesting the shootings of unarmed black people, like Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. They are also protesting in support of Eric Garner, who was choked to death, and Kalief Browder, a young man who killed himself but was mentally killed by the criminal justice system.
Kennedy was also mixing up this sense of duty to this country and the racial realities of why black people would question these allegiances. He also hoped the other more “respectable” blacks in the room would speak up and make more sense. But that didn’t happen. According to Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry said, “You’ve got a great many very, very accomplished people in this room, Mr. Attorney General. But the only man who should be listened to is that man over there,” referring to Smith.
After the meeting, Kennedy was so mad at what just happened that he ordered the FBI to increase surveillance on all the meeting attendees, as well as Dr. King. Kennedy, an Irish man who became a privileged white man, couldn’t understand why they were so angry and why they would talk to him that way. His privilege and naivety put invisible blinders on him. I do recall from reading in The Fire Next Time, that Kennedy said at that time that it would take 40 years for this country to elect a black president. His white privilege couldn’t show him how offensive it was to say this.
However, It seems that over time, Kennedy did have a change of heart on race issues, but when will the other folks with white privilege take off their blinders?
Last weekend I saw Raoul Peck’s excellent documentary about James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro. Baldwin says so many mindblowing things in the film that it would be hard to try to reinterpret everything that was said by him (so see the movie!). However, if you are unfamiliar with his work, please start reading some of his books, particularly No Name in the Street and The Devil Finds Work, which the film quotes from regularly.
The basis of this movie comes from an unfinished script Baldwin wrote to his agent in the 1980s called Remember This House. In it, he documents his relationships with his friends and civil rights icons Malcolm X, Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr.
I was most fascinated by this film because I now have a deeper appreciation for his thoughtfulness and powerful vocal expressions which are still relevant today. Watching the film would give you the impression that he was still alive today speaking about current racial and political issues, although most of the interviews from the movie were done in the 1960s.
Baldwin was years ahead of his time!
Out of the many, MANY things, one thing I remember him saying in the film was that he is only an optimist because he is still alive. Meaning life as a black man in America, whether in the 1960s or today, is pretty dismal. When he said that, I immediately thought of the continuing murders of unarmed black boys and men I see on the news regularly. I also thought about the continued disrespect black people face even in the highest levels of society. Look at all the racial hostility President and Mrs. Obama faced from white detractors and the amount of dignity and class they showed them in return. Unlike the current president, Obama had thick skin and had courage under fire.
We all have to be optimists just to survive.
By Talia Whyte
Bay State Banner
James Baldwin had fire, all right.
He was a dynamic public intellectual, a friend to some of the most important figures in history, and a brave writer who became an oracle for African Americans during the height of the civil rights movement. Baldwin motivated people around the world to think about what social change could really look like.
Read the full article here.