http://www.democracynow.org/2007/12/7/james_baldwin_20th_anniversary_commemoration_remembering
December 07, 2007 James Baldwin 20th Anniversary
Commemoration: Remembering the Life and Work of the
Legendary Writer and Civil Rights Activist

James Baldwin, the legendary African American writer and
civil rights activist, died 20 years ago this week. This
Sunday in Harlem, the Schomburg Center for Research on
Black Culture is holding a 20th anniversary
commemoration. We take a look at Baldwin's life and his
work with his sister-in-law Carole Weinstein, and we
hear Baldwin in his own words. We also hear Tony Award-
nominated actor Calvin Levels performing a part of his
acclaimed one-man show, "James Baldwin: Down from the
Mountaintop." Carole Weinstein, James Baldwin"s sister-
in-law. She is an educator and consultant and the
founder of Learning Works. She has known James Baldwin
since 1964.

Calvin Levels, actor and Tony-award nominee. He has
performed "James Baldwin-Down From the Mountaintop" at
over fifty venues across to rave reviews.

AMY GOODMAN: This week marks the twentieth anniversary
of the death of the legendary African American writer,
civil rights activist, James Baldwin.

He was born in Harlem in 1924. He grew up in poverty in
New York City. In 1948, he moved to Paris to become a
full-time writer. His first novel, Go Tell It on the
Mountain, was an autobiographical work about growing up
in Harlem. It's considered a classic American work.
Throughout the rest of the '50s, Baldwin moved from
Paris to New York City to Istanbul. His novels Notes of
a Native Son and Giovanni's Room explored themes of
homosexuality and interracial relationships. As an
openly gay man, James Baldwin also became increasingly
outspoken in condemning discrimination against gay
people.

Baldwin returned to the United States in the early '60s.
His book The Fire Next Time dealt with issues of black
identity and the state of racial struggle. Baldwin
became a fiery spokesperson for the Civil Rights
Movement. Here, he speaks at Oakland, California's
Castlemont High School. It was June 1963.

      JAMES BALDWIN: I think the other reason, and
perhaps the most important reason, that I am throwing
these suggestions out to you tonight is that in this
country, every black man born in this country, until
this present moment, is born into a country which
assures him, in as many ways as it can find, that he is
not worth the dirt he walks on. Every Negro boy and
every Negro girl born in this country until this present
moment undergoes the agony of trying to find in the body
politic, in the body social, outside himself/herself,
some image of himself or herself which is not demeaning.
Now, many, indeed, have survived, and at an incalculable
cost, and many more have perished and are perishing
every day. If you tell a child and do your best to prove
to the child that he is not worth life, it is entirely
possible that sooner or later the child begins to
believe it.

AMY GOODMAN: James Baldwin, speaking in June 1963. That
audio from the Pacific Radio Archives.

This Sunday in Harlem, the Schomburg Center for Research
on Black Culture is holding a twentieth anniversary
commemoration for James Baldwin. Among those who will be
there are Carole Weinstein, James Baldwin's sister-in-
law, and Calvin Levels, a Tony Award-nominated actor. He
travels the country performing his acclaimed one-man
show, James Baldwin: Down from the Mountaintop.

Carole Weinstein and Calvin Levels join me now in the
firehouse studio. We welcome you both to Democracy Now!

CAROLE WEINSTEIN: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Carole, talk about James Baldwin. When did
you first meet him? You married his brother David?

CAROLE WEINSTEIN: Yes. I met Jimmy and the family in
1964, when we were at a party in the East Village. And
from that day on, I was drawn into a world of love, of
passion, of commitment, of a journey of what is life all
about, which led to my own self-examination of identity
and everyone else's that I was around. When I first met
Jimmy and David at that time, they were in rehearsal for
Blues for Mister Charlie, which had a limited run at the
ANTA Theater on 52nd Street and Broadway.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what that play was about.

CAROLE WEINSTEIN: The play was to honor what
unfortunately was Emmett Till's murder in the South, and
it was a play, the first of its kind, to really examine
the challenges of racism in America, of growing up black
in America, and of growing up all over the country in
different ways, as well. And in his efforts to try to
express what occurred then and the impact it has on the
white population, as much as anyone else, the play was
very profound in its delivery.

And it was hard for audiences to take, because they-some
would leave. But one thing about that play, in
particular, was that it was-it was a blues. You know, it
was the beat of Jimmy's understanding of his people, of
the cadence, the commitments to trying to tell the story
in a way that people could hear it. And the performances
were so profound and dramatic and real that a lot of
people couldn't take the reality and did walk out.

The play was then taken to London, and it ran there
briefly. And, unfortunately, it didn't run as long as it
should have. But it was a very significant historical
moment in the history of American theater, American
literature, and interrelationships with people.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about James Baldwin leaving the United
States first.

CAROLE WEINSTEIN: Jimmy left the United States to stay
alive, really. He was so passionately distraught and
committed to trying to enable-it wasn't about his life;
it was about the lives of his family, the lives of
people. He had an extraordinary concern for humanity,
and you would never have a conversation with him where
he didn't try to put it in the context of what does this
mean for all of us. So it was always the greater good,
the community, the concern, which was totally unselfish.
And so, this whole experience of him leaving was his way
of going away to reflect on how he could talk about,
write about, communicate about what he had been through
to educate people in a way that could help them be
better human beings. And that meant the entire world.

AMY GOODMAN: He went to France, he went to Turkey.

CAROLE WEINSTEIN: Yes. He went to Istanbul. He went to
Turkey. He lived in both those places quite a number of
years. And he found his way in Paris, literally on the
streets, learned French like a native, was able to speak
and communicate it as well as anyone who had grown up
there. He befriended and was befriended by the cafe
society, so to speak, of the Left Bank, including
Richard Wright and all kinds of other people.

And in that place, he became very embroiled in trying to
really make a statement about the significance of what
it takes to really become who you can become. He knew he
had to write. He knew he had to express what he knew was
real. And the way to do it was to do it there. From
Paris, he moved to the south of France in 1971. He
purchased a house in St. Paul.

AMY GOODMAN: But he came back in the '60s-

CAROLE WEINSTEIN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: -to the United States.

CAROLE WEINSTEIN: Because of the Civil Rights Movement.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to a speech that James
Baldwin made in New York. It was September 25, 1963,
just ten days after the Birmingham church bombing that
killed four little girls. This is some of what James
Baldwin had to say.

      JAMES BALDWIN: We are not-are we?-at the mercy of
our political institutions. If we created them, we are
responsible for them. We have the right and the duty to
overhaul them, to change them. We are not-are we?-so
helpless, to say that the [inaudible] has to stay there
forever. Who said so? I dare them to go in any
Birmingham barbershop and talk to anybody. I dare them.

      And I think that commission, the appointment of
that commission, the very notion, and the apathy with
which the country has greeted it, proves my point. We
have no right to allow the death of six children. And
our common disaster and our common crisis and our moral
crisis to be met in this way, it proves, if anything
does, that the terms in negotiation must now be
radically changed. One cannot negotiate with the
representatives of one's oppressors.

      It is time to let the nation know that the death
of my child-I, as a black man-and the spiritual death of
your child-you, as a white man-cannot be met by sending
down a commission to find out what happened. We know
what happened. What we have to do is prevent it from
happening again. And in order to do that, one doesn't
beg the Birmingham city fathers for a truce; you use
whatever weight you have to force them to recognize your
presence in that city, in that state, and in this
country, as a man, no matter what it costs who.

AMY GOODMAN: James Baldwin, speaking in New York. It was
ten days after the Birmingham church bombing-four little
girls killed there.

I want to go now to an excerpt of a documentary about
James Baldwin called The Price of the Ticket. It was
made in 1989 by Karen Thorsen. The clip tracks Baldwin's
return to the United States from self-imposed exile in
Europe to take part in the civil rights struggle.

      JAMES BALDWIN: When Dorothy Counts was spat on by
the mob as she was trying to go to school, that was the
day I decided I was coming home. And I came home, you
know, to see, you know, to do whatever I could do. And I
went south, and I began to deal with the reality, which
had always been incipient in me but never been expressed
or objectified. I fell in love with those people. And I
was very happy to be in the South, even though it was
very frightening. Something in me-something in me
recognized it. Something in me had come home.

      UNIDENTIFIED 1: N---r, you live in the world you
live in, Brother.

      UNIDENTIFIED 2: He's not even teaching me about
the future of my people.

      UNIDENTIFIED 1: Well, what are you going to school
for then, dummy?

      UNIDENTIFIED 2: We don't even have a country.

      UNIDENTIFIED 1: I know that!

      UNIDENTIFIED 2: Do we have a country?

      UNIDENTIFIED 1: He said the United States is your
country, which is not your country. We have no flag,
Brother.

      JAMES BALDWIN: A boy last week-he was sixteen-told
me on television-thank God we got him to talk, maybe
somebody was taught to listen-he said, "I've got no
country, I've got no flag." And he's only sixteen years
old. And I couldn't say, "You do." I don't have any
evidence to prove that he does.

      And the moment you were born, since you don't know
any better, every stick and stone and every face is
white, and since you have not yet seen a mirror, you
suppose that you are, too. It comes as a great shock,
around the age of five or six or seven, to discover the
flag to which you have pledged allegiance, along with
everybody else, has not pledged allegiance to you. It
comes as a great shock to discover that Gary Cooper
killing off the Indians, when you were rooting for Gary
Cooper, that the Indians were you. It comes as a great
shock to discover the country, which is your birthplace
and to which you owe your life and your identity, has
not in its whole system of reality involved any place
for you.

AMY GOODMAN: That was James Baldwin actually in
Cambridge debating William Buckley, and this from the
documentary The Price of the Ticket, written and
directed by Karen Thorsen.

Our guests are Carole Weinstein, who is the sister-in-
law of James Baldwin, and Calvin Levels, actor, Tony
Award nominee. He is performing James Baldwin, Down from
the Mountaintop, around the country. This Sunday at
3:00, he'll be at the Schomburg Center performing this
one-man show. How did you get involved with this,
Calvin?

CALVIN LEVELS: I got involved with it-one day I was just
sitting at home thinking about something to work on and
a project to write, and it popped into my head, you
know, James Baldwin, the times that we're living in, we
really could use a voice like Baldwin now. And I also
thought that this younger generation, the new
generation, needs to know about this great man, you
know, because he left a blueprint for struggle and for
standing up, being a warrior in the movement. And he was
a great pacifist, so I just thought it would be a great,
great project here.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you perform a portion of what you will
be doing, you are performing around the country?

CALVIN LEVELS: Yes, if I can ask Jimmy to come here
right now. Jimmy, where are you?

Yes, OK, I'm here, Calvin. Yes, I heard you playing a
clip about the South earlier. You know, I was very
terrified to go to the South for the first time, but I
never forget my first trip to the South, see, because I
was flying into Atlanta, Georgia, and I was looking down
from the plane, and I was seeing the color of the earth-
blood red-thinking that that earth, it had acquired this
color from all the blood that tripped down from the
trees. My mind, you know, was filled with the image of
the black man, see, younger than I, perhaps, my own age,
hanging from a tree. A white man watched him, cut his
sex from him with a knife. And I wonder, when will this
country learn? See, those nooses are still being hung
all over this country, you know?

If the people of this nation are not capable of true
self-evaluation, this nation may yet become one of the
most distinguished monumental failures in the history of
the world. People imagining their history flatters them,
as it does indeed, since they wrote it, they are impaled
on that history, like a butterfly on a pin, and become
incapable of seeing or changing themselves or the world.
Now, this is the place in which, it seems to me, the
most white Americans find themselves: impaled. The do
not know how to release themselves from it and suffer
enormously, see, from that resulting personal
incoherence. See, they are dimly or vividly aware that
the history they have fed themselves is mainly a lie,
alright?

Now, the one person who released us all from that
suffering-I met on that blood-red soil of Atlanta,
Georgia, Dr. Martin Luther King. He told me, he says,
"Jimmy, segregation is dead." And I replied, "Yes. But
just how long and how violent and how expensive of a
funeral is it going to be?" And I remember him speaking
at that church-that was Dexter Avenue Baptist Church-and
seeing that bomb damage done to those. After witnessing
those terrorist acts, you know, something inside me
changed. I had to become political. I could no longer
sit somewhere, honing my talent to fine heads, after
I've been to all those places in the South, you know,
seeing all those boys and girls, men and women, black
and white, you know, just longing for change. It would
have been impossible for me to just drop them a visit
and then leave.

But in retrospect, in retrospect, there was something-
something very beautiful about that period, something
very life-giving for me to be there, to march, be part
of a sit-in, see it through my own eyes. But not
everything that could be faced could be changed, but
nothing can be changed until it is faced.

Speaking of change, you know, in the history of this
country, it really hasn't changed all that much since
that historic march on Washington, because the people-
the seat of power remains the seat of power. And I know
how that power work, baby, because it worked on me. And
therefore, I cannot afford myself any illusions
concerning the manipulation of that power; otherwise I
never would have survived it.

I decided very early on to choose a power which outlasts
King, which has allowed me to come back here today and
tell you that those people sitting in Washington, D.C.,
they don't really believe in the things they say they
believe, and they don't even know about the world which
surrounds them. I mean, if they couldn't deal with my
father and me, how could they deal with the people in
Tehran or Baghdad, or New Orleans, for that matter? If
somebody would throw them in jail for all their lies,
un-American activities, the future of this country would
be much brighter. Ignorance allied with power is the
most ferocious enemy that justice can have.

Look, I love America more than any country in the world,
and it is exactly for that reason that I insist on the
right to criticize her perpetually. Anyway, that's all I
have to say about that.

AMY GOODMAN: Calvin Levels, Tony Award-nominated actor,
playing James Baldwin all over this country, and this
weekend, Sunday, come at the Schomburg Center.

I want to end with a clip of James Baldwin talking about
race relations in this country and concepts of whiteness
and blackness. He is talking in September of '63.

      JAMES BALDWIN: The American revolution, the terms
are these: not that I drive you out or that you drive me
out, but that we come together and embrace and learn to
live together. That is the only way that we can have
achieved the American revolution.

      Now, if we can face this, it involves facing a
great many things. It demands that white people face the
fact that I, for example, or any black person they will
ever meet or have ever met-I am not an exotic rarity. I
am not a stranger. I am none of those things. On the
contrary, for all you know, for all you know, I might be
your uncle, your brother, your cousin, among other
things. One of the things that has happened here-and the
pathology of the Deep South proves it; so does the
pathology of the North, which dictates to them that they
move out and I move in-among other things which have to
be excavated here is the fact that this long history is
also the history of a love affair.

AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt of James Baldwin. And you can go
to our website at democracynow.org and see these
photographs that have not been shown publicly before.
Thank you, Carole Weinstein. Thank you, Calvin Levels.
This weekend, 3:00 at the Schomburg Center at 515
Malcolm X Boulevard; 7:00, we'll have a panel discussion
with Cornel West and Amiri Baraka and others. Hope you
join us.

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