Happy Birthday To James Baldwin's America

A Black Eyed Celebration

Gordon Parks. Mobile AL 1956

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August 2nd was James Baldwin’s 100th birthday.

The above quote and following quotes are from his essay Letter from a Region in My Mind. I paired his words with photos from Gordon Parks’ masterful Segregation Story – Mobile and Shady Grove AL 1956.

All these decades later, both their truths still have so much to say to each of us.

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“Whatever [W]hite people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably,
what they do not know about themselves.”

—James Baldwin

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“The American Negro has the great advantage of having never believed that collection of myths to which [W]hite Americans cling: that their ancestors were all freedom-loving heroes…

that they were born in the greatest country the world has ever seen, or that Americans are invincible in battle and wise in peace…

that Americans have always dealt honorably with Mexicans and Indians and all other neighbors or inferiors,

that American men are the world’s most direct and virile; that American women are pure.” 

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“Negroes know far more about [W]hite Americans than that; it can almost be said, in fact, that they know about [W]hite Americans what parents—or, anyway, mothers—know about their children, and that they very often regard [W]hite Americans that way. 

And perhaps this attitude, held in spite of what they know and have endured, helps to explain why Negroes, on the whole, and until lately, have allowed themselves to feel so little hatred.” 

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“The tendency has really been, insofar as this was possible, to dismiss white people as the slightly mad victims of their own brainwashing.

One watched the lives they led. One could not be fooled about that; one watched the things they did and the excuses that they gave themselves…  

And if a [W]hite man was really in trouble, deep trouble, it was to the Negro’s door that he came. And one felt that if one had had that [W]hite man’s worldly advantages, one would never have become as bewildered and as joyless and as thoughtlessly cruel as he.”

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“The Negro came to the [W]hite man for a roof or for five dollars or for a letter to the judge; the [W]hite man came to the Negro for love. But he was not often able to give what he came seeking. The price was too high; he had too much to lose. And the Negro knew this, too.

When one knows this about a man, it is impossible for one to hate him, but unless he becomes a man—becomes equal—it is also impossible for one to love him…”

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“(Ask any Negro what he knows about the [W]hite people with whom he works. And then ask the [W]hite people with whom he works what they know about him.)”

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“If we—and now I mean the relatively conscious [W]hites and the relatively conscious [B]lacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of the others—do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world.

If we do not now dare everything, the fulfillment of that prophecy, re-created from the Bible in song by a slave, is upon us: God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time!”

—Excerpts from Letter from a Region in My Mind by James Baldwin

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