I Am Not Your Negro

1

Mr. Baldwin,

I'm sure you still

meet the remark that:

"What are the Negroes...

why aren't they optimistic?

Um... They say, "But

it's getting so much better.

There are negro mayors,

there are negroes

in all of sports."

There are negroes in politics.

They're even accorded

the ultimate accolade

of being in

television commercials now.

I'm glad you're smiling.

Is it at once getting

much better and still hopeless?

I don't think there's

much hope for it, you know,

to tell you the truth,

as long as people are using

this peculiar language.

It's not a question of

what happens to the Negro here,

or to the black man here,

that's a very vivid question

for me, you know,

but the real question is what's

going to happen to this country.

I have to repeat that.

You're damn right,

I've got the blues,

From my head

down to my shoes

You're damn right,

I've got the blues,

From my head

down to my shoes

I can't win

'Cause I don't have

a thing to lose

I stopped by

my daughter's house

You know I just want to

use the phone

I stopped by

my daughter's house

You know I just want to

use the phone

The summer has scarcely begun,

and I feel already

that it's almost over.

And I will be 55.

Yes, 55, in a month.

I am about to undertake

the journey.

And this is a journey,

to tell you the truth,

which I always knew

that I would have to make,

but had hoped, perhaps,

certainly had hoped,

not to have to make so soon.

I am saying that a journey

is called that

because you cannot know

what you will discover

on the journey,

what you will do

with what you find,

or what you find will do to you.

Not only have a right

to be free,

- we have a duty to be free.

- Yeah.

And so when you sit down on the bus

and you sit down in the front,

or sit down by a white person,

you are sitting there because

you have a duty to sit down,

not merely because

you have a right.

The time

of these lives and deaths,

from a public point of view,

is 1955,

when we first heard of Martin,

to 1968, when he was murdered.

Medgar was murdered

in the summer of 1963.

Malcolm was murdered in 1965.

Here, take my hand,

Precious Lord

Lead me on

Let me stand

I am tired

I'm weak

I am worn

Through the storm

The three men,

Medgar, Malcolm, and Martin,

were very different men.

Consider that Martin

was only 26 in 1955.

He took on his shoulders

the weight of the crimes,

and the lies,

and the hope of a nation.

I want these three lives

to bang against

and reveal each other,

as in truth, they did

and use their dreadful journey

as a means of

instructing the people

whom they loved so much,

who betrayed them,

and for whom

they gave their lives.

The moment a negro child

walks into the school,

every decent, self-respecting,

loving parent

should take his white child

out of that broken school.

Go back to your own school.

God forgives murder

and he forgives adultery.

But He is very angry

and He actually curses

all who do integrate.

That's when

I saw the photograph.

On every newspaper kiosk

on that wide, tree-shaped

boulevard in Paris,

were photographs

of 15-year-old Dorothy Counts

being reviled and spat upon

by the mob

as she was making her way

to school

in Charlotte, North Carolina.

There was unutterable pride,

tension and anguish

in that girl's face

as she approached

the halls of learning,

with history jeering

at her back.

It made me furious,

it filled me

with both hatred and pity.

And it made me ashamed.

Some one of us should have

been there with her!

But it was on that

bright afternoon

that I knew

I was leaving France.

I could simply no longer

sit around Paris,

discussing the Algerian

and the Black American problem.

Everybody else

was paying their dues,

and it was time

I went home and paid mine.

If you was white,

You'd be alright

If you was brown,

Stick around

But as you's black

Oh, brother

Get back, get back, get back

I went to

an employment office

I got a number

and I got in line

They called

everybody's number

But they never did call mine

I said, if you was white,

You'd be alright

If you was brown,

Stick around

But as you's black

Oh, brother...

I had at last come home.

If there was, in this,

some illusion,

there was also much truth.

In the years in Paris,

I had never been homesick

for anything American.

Neither waffles, ice cream,

hot dogs, baseball,

majorettes, movies,

nor the Empire State Building,

nor Coney Island,

nor the Statue of Liberty,

nor the Daily News,

nor Times Square.

All of these things

had passed out of me.

They might never have existed,

and it made absolutely

no difference to me

if I never saw them again.

But I missed my brothers

and sisters, and my mother.

They made a difference.

I wanted to be able to see them,

and to see their children.

I hoped that

they wouldn't forget me.

I missed Harlem Sunday mornings

and fried chicken,

and biscuits,

I missed the music,

I missed the style...

that style possessed by

no other people in the world.

I missed the way

the dark face closes,

the way dark eyes watch,

and the way,

when a dark face opens,

a light seems to go everywhere.

I missed, in short,

my connections,

missed the life which had

produced me and nourished me

and paid for me.

Now, though I was a stranger,

I was home.

I am fascinated by the movement

on and off the screen.

I am about seven.

I'm with my mother, or my aunt.

The movie is

Dance, Fools, Dance.

I was aware that Joan Crawford

was a white lady.

Yet, I remember being sent

to the store sometime later,

and a colored woman who, to me,

looked exactly

like Joan Crawford,

was buying something.

She was incredibly beautiful.

She looked down at me

with so beautiful a smile

that I was not even embarrassed,

which was rare for me.

By this time,

I had been taken in hand

by a young white schoolteacher

named Bill Miller,

a beautiful woman,

very important to me.

She gave me books to read and

talked to me about the books,

and about the world:

about Ethiopia, and Italy,

and the German Third Reich,

and took me to see

plays and films,

to which no one else

would have dreamed

of taking a ten-year-old boy.

It is certainly

because of Bill Miller,

who arrived

in my terrifying life so soon,

that I never really managed

to hate white people.

Though, God knows,

I've often wished to murder

more than one or two.

Therefore, I begin to suspect

that white people

did not act as they did

because they were white,

but for some other reason.

I was a child of course,

and therefore unsophisticated.

I took Bill Miller as she was,

or as she appeared to be to me.

She too, anyway,

was treated like a n*gger,

especially by the cops,

and she had no love

for landlords.

Richard!

Can't get him up!

Richard!

Can't get him up!

Richard!

Can't get him up!

Lazy Richard!

Can't get him up!

Richard!

In these days,

no one resembling my father

has yet made an appearance

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