Notes of a native son: The world according to James Baldwin - Christina Greer — Transcript

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1. 0:07Over the course of the 1960s,
2. 0:09the FBI amassed almost two thousand documents
3. 0:13in an investigation into one of America’s most celebrated minds.
4. 0:17The subject of this inquiry was a writer named James Baldwin.
5. 0:21At the time,
6. 0:22the FBI investigated many artists and thinkers,
7. 0:25but most of their files were a fraction the size of Baldwin’s.
8. 0:29During the years when the FBI hounded him,
9. 0:31he became one of the best-selling black authors in the world.
10. 0:35So what made James Baldwin loom so large in the imaginations
11. 0:38of both the public and the authorities?
12. 0:42Born in Harlem in 1924,
13. 0:44he was the oldest of nine children.
14. 0:46At age fourteen, he began to work as a preacher.
15. 0:49By delivering sermons, he developed his voice as a writer,
16. 0:53but also grew conflicted about the Church’s stance
17. 0:55on racial inequality and homosexuality.
18. 0:58After high school,
19. 0:59he began writing novels and essays while taking a series of odd jobs.
20. 1:04But the issues that had driven him away from the Church
21. 1:06were still inescapable in his daily life.
22. 1:09Constantly confronted with racism and homophobia,
23. 1:12he was angry and disillusioned, and yearned for a less restricted life.
24. 1:16So in 1948, at the age of 24,
25. 1:20he moved to Paris on a writing fellowship.
26. 1:23From France, he published his first novel,
27. 1:25"Go Tell it on the Mountain," in 1953.
28. 1:28Set in Harlem,
29. 1:29the book explores the Church as a source of both repression and hope.
30. 1:34It was popular with both black and white readers.
31. 1:37As he earned acclaim for his fiction,
32. 1:39Baldwin gathered his thoughts on race, class, culture and exile
33. 1:43in his 1955 extended essay, "Notes of a Native Son."
34. 1:48Meanwhile,
35. 1:49the Civil Rights movement was gaining momentum in America.
36. 1:52Black Americans were making incremental gains at registering to vote and voting,
37. 1:56but were still denied basic dignities in schools, on buses, in the work force,
38. 2:01and in the armed services.
39. 2:03Though he lived primarily in France for the rest of his life,
40. 2:06Baldwin was deeply invested in the movement,
41. 2:09and keenly aware of his country’s unfulfilled promise.
42. 2:12He had seen family, friends, and neighbors
43. 2:15spiral into addiction, incarceration and suicide.
44. 2:18He believed their fates originated from the constraints
45. 2:21of a segregated society.
46. 2:23In 1963,
47. 2:25he published "The Fire Next Time,"
48. 2:27an arresting portrait of racial strife
49. 2:29in which he held white America accountable,
50. 2:32but he also went further,
51. 2:33arguing that racism hurt white people too.
52. 2:36In his view,
53. 2:37everyone was inextricably enmeshed in the same social fabric.
54. 2:42He had long believed that:
55. 2:43“People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.”
56. 2:47Baldwin’s role in the Civil Rights movement
57. 2:49went beyond observing and reporting.
58. 2:51He also traveled through the American South
59. 2:53attending rallies giving lectures of his own.
60. 2:56He debated both white politicians and black activists,
61. 2:59including Malcolm X,
62. 3:01and served as a liaison between black activists and intellectuals
63. 3:04and white establishment leaders like Robert Kennedy.
64. 3:07Because of Baldwin’s unique ability
65. 3:09to articulate the causes of social turbulence
66. 3:11in a way that white audiences were willing to hear,
67. 3:14Kennedy and others tended to see him as an ambassador for black Americans
68. 3:18— a label Baldwin rejected.
69. 3:20And at the same time,
70. 3:22his faculty with words led the FBI to view him as a threat.
71. 3:25Even within the Civil Rights movement,
72. 3:27Baldwin could sometimes feel like an outsider
73. 3:29for his choice to live abroad, as well as his sexuality,
74. 3:33which he explored openly in his writing
75. 3:35at a time when homophobia ran rampant.
76. 3:37Throughout his life,
77. 3:39Baldwin considered it his role to bear witness.
78. 3:42Unlike many of his peers,
79. 3:43he lived to see some of the victories of the Civil Rights movement,
80. 3:46but the continuing racial inequalities in the United States weighed heavily on him.
81. 3:51Though he may have felt trapped in his moment in history,
82. 3:53his words have made generations of people feel known,
83. 3:56while guiding them toward a more nuanced understanding
84. 3:59of society’s most complex issues.