FTV 015 James Baldwin
“All I know about fear is that if you are afraid of it, walk toward it.” ~James Baldwin
James Baldwin was known to the world as the genius behind the works Go Tell It On the Mountain, Notes of a Native Son, Giovanni’s Room, and The Fire Next Time, among others. His work – whether fiction or nonfiction – brought the realities of life for African Americans in the United States to worldwide attention. His responsibility was to be, as he so often prefaced his speeches, “brutally honest.” That honesty brought him to the forefront of the political arena and sitting among the leadership in the fight for Civil Rights in the United States. This week, on From the Vault we’ll immerse ourselves in the political life of James Baldwin.
James Baldwin’s voice is as mesmerizing as Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, his ideas as revolutionary as Malcolm X’s, and yet he always seems to fit just somewhere in between the two. The Pacifica Radio Archives is fortunate to have a generous collection of Mr. Baldwin in his own voice, both in presentation and interview, that illustrate his leanings like no other. The recordings in this collection paint a vivid landscape of this remarkable man and his political beliefs, and it is in this spirit that James Baldwin passes from us to you.
From Baldwin’s speech after the murder of four children in Birmingham to his interview with Elsa Knight Thompson, From the Vault presents Baldwin truly speaking on Baldwin. You’ll also hear commentary on Mr. Baldwin by Molefi Asante, a contemporary African American intellectual and the leader of the Afrocentric school of thought, on what James Baldwin means to African Americans today.
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