All language subtitles for I Am Not Your Negro 2016 (1080p x265 10bit Tigole)-eng

Dick Cavett: 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.

(AUDIENCE LAUGH)

- I'm glad you're smiling.
- (AUDIENCE LAUGH)

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 ♪

(SAMUEL JACKSON NARRATES WORDS/
VOICE OF JAMES BALDWIN)

(SIREN BLARING)

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.
- Crowd: 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.

Baldwin: 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 ♪

Baldwin: 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.

(TRAIN RATTLES)

Leander Perez: 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.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

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.

- (CROWD SHOUTING)
- (WHISTLES BLOWING)

Baldwin: 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... ♪

(SIRENS BLARING)

(INDISTINCT SPEECH)

Baldwin: 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.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

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.

(APPLAUSE)

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.

(INDISTINCT SINGING)

- (SHOUTING)
- (DRUMS PLAYING)

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.

(SHOUTING AND JEERING)

Therefore, I begin to suspect

that white people did not act as they did

because they were white,
but for some other reason.

(WHIMPERING)

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 nigger,

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! ♪

Baldwin: In these days,
no one resembling my father

has yet made an appearance
on the American cinema scene.

♪ Can't get him up! ♪

♪ We'll try to get him on the phone ♪

♪ I was laying down dreamin'... ♪

Baldwin: No, it's not entirely true.

There were, for example,
Stepin Fetchit and Willie Best

and Mantan Moreland,
all of whom, rightly or wrongly,

I loathed.

It seemed to me that they lied
about the world I knew,

and debased it,

and certainly I did not know
anybody like them,

as far as I could tell.

For it also possible that
their comic, bug-eyed terror

contained the truth concerning a terror

by which I hoped never to be engulfed.

Yet, I had no reservations
at all concerning the terror

of the Black janitor in They Won't Forget.

Give me police!

Give me police!

Give me... Give me police!

Baldwin: I think that it was
a black actor

named Clinton Rosemond
who played this part,

and he looked a little like my father.

I didn't do it. I didn't do it!

I didn't do it! I didn't do it!

Baldwin: He is terrified
because a young white girl

in this small Southern town
has been raped and murdered,

and her body has been found
upon the premises

of which he is the janitor.

Good morning, Tump.

Baldwin: The role
of the janitor is small,

yet the man's face
bangs in my memory until today.

- I have done nothing.
- Nobody says you have, Tom.

But they might.

Baldwin: The film's
icy brutality both scared me...

What for?

...and strengthened me.

(WHIPPING)

- (INAUDIBLE)
- (WHIPPING)

Baldwin: Because Uncle Tom
refuses to take vengeance

in his own hands,
he was not a hero for me.

- (GUNSHOT)
- (SCREAMING)

Heroes, as far as I could see,
where white,

and not merely because of the movies,

but because of the land in which I lived,

of which movies were simply a reflection.

I despised and feared those heroes

because they did take vengeance
into their own hands.

They thought vengeance was theirs to take.

And, yes, I understood that:

my countrymen were my enemy.

(SCREAMING)

I suspect that all these stories
are designed to reassure us

that no crime was committed.

We've made a legend out of a massacre.

Baldwin: Leaving aside
all the physical facts

which one can quote.

Leaving aside rape or murder.

Leaving aside the bloody catalog
of oppression,

which we are, in one way,
too familiar with already,

what this does to the subjugated

is to destroy his sense of reality.

This means, in the case
of an American negro,

born in that glittering republic,

and in the moment you are 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 that Gary Cooper
killing off the Indians,

when you were rooting for Gary Cooper,

- that the Indians were you.
- (CROWD MURMUR)

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,

evolved any place for you.

Baldwin:

I know how to do it, technically.

It is a matter of research and journeys.

And with you or without you,
I will do it anyway.

I begin in September,
when I go on the road.

"The road" means my return to the South.

It means briefly, for example,
seeing Myrlie Evers,

and the children.

Those children who are children no longer.

It means going back to Atlanta,
to Selma, to Birmingham.

It means seeing Coretta Scott King,

and Martin's children.

I know that Martin's daughter,

whose name I don't remember,
and Malcolm's oldest daughter,

whose name is Attalah
are both in the theatre,

and apparently are friends.

It means seeing Betty Shabazz,
Malcolm's widow,

and the five younger children.

It means exposing myself
as one of the witnesses

to the lives and deaths
of their famous fathers.

And it means much, much more than that.

"A clod of witnesses,"
as old St. Paul once put it.

Baldwin:

I saw Malcolm before I met him.

I was giving a lecture
somewhere in New York.

Malcolm was sitting
in the first row of the hall,

bending forward at such an angle
that his long arms

nearly caressed the ankles
of his long legs,

staring up at me.

I very nearly panicked.

I knew Malcolm only by legend,
and this legend,

since I was a Harlem street boy,

I was sufficiently astute to distrust.

Malcolm might be the torch
that white people claim he was,

though, in general,

white America's evaluations
of these matters

would be laughable and even pathetic

did not these evaluations
have such wicked results.

On the other hand,

Malcolm had no reason to trust me either.

And so I stumbled through my lecture,

with Malcolm never
taking his eyes from my face.

♪ Don't know why ♪

♪ There's no sun up in the sky ♪

♪ Stormy weather ♪

♪ Since my man and I ain't together ♪

♪ Keeps rainin' all the time ♪

Baldwin: As a member of the NAACP,

Medgar was investigating
the murder of a black man,

which had occurred months before,

had shown me letters from black people

asking him to do this,

and he had asked me to come with him.

♪ Raise up! ♪

♪ Get yourself together,
And drive that funky soul ♪

Baldwin: I was terribly frightened,

but perhaps that fieldtrip
will help us define

what I mean by the word "witness".

I was to discover that the line
which separates a witness

from an actor is a very thin line indeed.

Nevertheless, the line is real.

I was not, for example, a Black Muslim,

in the same way,
though for different reasons,

that I never became a Black Panther.

Because I did not believe that
all white people were devils,

and I did not want young
black people to believe that.

I was not a member of any
Christian congregation because

I knew that they had not heard

and did not live by the commandment,

"Love one another as I love you."

And I was not a member of the NAACP

because in the North, where I grew up,

the NAACP was fatally entangled
with black class distinctions,

or illusions of the same,

which repelled a shoe-shine boy like me.

I did not have to deal with the
criminal state of Mississippi,

hour by hour and day by day,

to say nothing of night after night.

I did not have to sweat
cold sweat after decisions

involving hundreds of thousands of lives.

I was not responsible for raising money,

or deciding how to use it.

I was not responsible for strategy

controlling prayer-meetings, marches,

petitions, voting registration drives.

I saw the Sheriffs, the Deputies,

the Storm Troopers,
more or less in passing.

I was never in town to stay.

This was sometimes hard on my morale,

but I had to accept, as time wore on,

that part of my responsibility,
as a witness,

was to move as largely
and as freely as possible.

To write the story, and to get it out.

(JAZZ MUSIC)

We should all be concerned
with but one goal,

the eradication of crime.

The Federal Bureau of
Investigation is as close to you

as your nearest telephone.

It seeks to be your protector

in all matters within its jurisdiction.

It belongs to you.

(ROCKET FIRING)

Baldwin: White people
are astounded by Birmingham.

Black people aren't.

White people are endlessly
demanding to be reassured

that Birmingham is really on Mars.

They don't want to believe,
still less to act on the belief,

that what is happening in Birmingham

is happening all over the country.

- (CHANTING)
- (WHISTLE BLOWING)

They don't want to realize
that there is not one step,

morally or actually,

between Birmingham and Los Angeles.

(CROWD SHOUTING)

(SINGING AND CLAPPING)

Officer: Move on, move on!

(SINGING CONTINUES)

We've invited three men,

on the forefront of The Negro Struggle,

to sit down and talk with us

in front of the television camera.

Each of these men, through
his actions and his words,

but with vastly different
manner and means,

is a spokesman for some segment
of the Negro people today.

Black people in this country
have been the victims

of violence at the hands
of the white man for 400 years.

And following the ignorant
negro preachers,

we have thought that it was
Godlike to turn the other cheek

to the brute that was brutalizing us.

Malcolm X, one of the most
articulate exponents

of the Black Muslim philosophy,

has said of your movement
and your philosophy

that it plays into the hands
of the white oppressors,

that they are happy to hear you talk about

love for the oppressor,
because this disarms the Negro

and fits into the stereotype
of the Negro as a meek,

turning the other cheek sort of creature.

Would you care to comment
on Mr. X's beliefs?

Well, I don't think of love as...

in this context, as emotional bosh,

but I think of love as something strong

and that organizes itself
into powerful direct action.

This is what I've tried to teach
in the struggle in the South.

We are not engaged in a struggle

that means we sit down and do nothing.

There is a great deal
of difference between

non-resistance to evil
and non-violent resistance.

Martin Luther King is just a
20th century or modern Uncle Tom

or a religious Uncle Tom,

who is doing the same thing today

to keep Negroes defenseless
in the face of attack

that Uncle Tom did on the plantation

to keep those Negroes defenseless

in the face of the attacks
of the Klan in that day.

I think, though, that we can be sure

that the vast majority of Negroes

who engage in the demonstrations,

and who understand
the non-violent philosophy,

will be able to face dogs

and all of the other brutal
methods that are used

without retaliating with violence,

because they understand

that one of the first principles
of non-violence

is a willingness
to be the recipient of violence,

while never inflicting violence
upon another.

Baldwin: As concerns Malcolm and Martin,

I watched two men,
coming from unimaginably

different backgrounds,
whose positions, originally,

were poles apart,

driven closer and closer together.

By the time each died,
their positions had become,

virtually, the same position.

It can be said, indeed,

that Martin picked up Malcolm's burden,

articulated the vision
which Malcolm had begun to see,

and for which he paid with his life,

and that Malcolm was one of the people

Martin saw on the mountain-top.

Medgar was too young
to have seen this happen,

though he hoped for it, and
would not have been surprised.

But Medgar was murdered first.

I was older than Medgar,
Malcolm and Martin.

I was raised to believe that
the eldest was supposed to be

a model for the younger,
and was, of course,

expected to die first.

Not one of these three lived to be forty.

Two, four, six eight,
we don't want to integrate!

Two, four, six eight,
we don't want to integrate!

(INDISTINCT SHOUTING)

We want King! We want King! We want King!

- (GUNSHOT)
- (SCREAMING)

(SHOUTING)

We need an organization
that no one downtown loves.

We need one that's ready
and willing to take action,

any kind of action,
by any means necessary.

(APPLAUSE)

When Malcolm talks,

or one of the Muslim ministers talk,

they articulate for all
the Negro people who hear them,

who listen to them,
they articulate their suffering.

The suffering which has been
in this country so long denied.

That's Malcolm's great authority
over any of his audiences.

He corroborates their reality.

He tells them that
they really exist, you know.

- (SHOUTING)
- (SIRENS BLARING)

Officer: Get back. Get back!

- I am!
- (INDISTINCT CHANTING)

- I am!
- (INDISTINCT CHANTING)

(SIRENS BLARING)

(EXPLOSIONS)

There are days, this is one of them...

...when you wonder...

...what your role is in this country

and what your future is in it.

How precisely
are you going to reconcile...

...yourself to your situation here,

and how you are going to communicate...

...to the vast, heedless, unthinking...

...cruel white majority

that you are here.

I'm terrified at the moral apathy,

the death of the heart,

which is happening in my country.

These people have deluded
themselves for so long

that they really don't think I'm human.

I base this on their conduct,
not on what they say.

And this means that they
have become, in themselves...

...moral monsters.

- (JAZZ MUSIC)
- (INDISTINCT CHATTER)

(CAMERAS CLICKING)

Most of the white Americans
I've ever encountered,

really, you know, had
a Negro friend or a Negro maid

or somebody in high school,
but they never, you know,

or rarely, after school was over
or whatever,

came to my kitchen, you know.

We were segregated
from the schoolhouse door.

Therefore, he doesn't know,
he really does not know,

what it was like for me to leave my house,

to leave the school and go back to Harlem.

He doesn't know how Negroes live.

And it comes as a great surprise
to the Kennedy brothers

and to everybody else in the country.

I'm certain, again, you know,

that again like most white
Americans I have encountered,

they have no...

I'm sure they have nothing
whatever against Negroes...

That's really not the question.

The question is really
a kind of apathy and ignorance,

which is the price we pay for segregation.

That's what segregation means.

You don't know what's happening
on the other side of the wall,

because you don't want to know.

I was in some way,

in those years,
without entirely realizing it,

the great Black Hope
of the great White Father.

I was not a racist, or so I thought.

Malcolm was a racist, or so they thought.

In fact, we were simply
trapped in the same situation.

Well, you tell that to my boy tonight,

when you put him to sleep
on the living room couch.

And you tell it to him in the morning,

when his mother goes out of here

to take care of somebody else's kids.

And tell it to me, when we want
some curtains or some drapes

and you sneak out of here and
go work in somebody's kitchen.

All I want is to make
a future for this family.

All I want is to be able to
stand in front of my boy

like my father never was able to do to me.

Baldwin:

Lorraine Hansberry
would not be very much younger

than I am now, if she were alive.

At the time of the Bobby Kennedy meeting,

she was thirty-three.

That was one of the very last
times I saw her on her feet,

and she died at the age of thirty-four.

I miss her so much.

People forget how young everybody was.

Bobby Kennedy, for another,
quite different example,

was thirty-eight.

We wanted him to tell his brother,

the president,
to personally escort to school,

on that day or the day after,
a small black girl,

already scheduled
to enter Deep South School.

"That way," we said,

"it will be clear that
whoever spits on that child

will be spitting on the nation."

He didn't understand this either.

"It would be," he said,
"a meaningless moral gesture."

"We would like," said Lorraine,
"from you, a moral commitment".

He looked insulted,

seemed to feel that
he'd been wasting his time.

Well, Lorraine sat still,
watching all the while.

She looked at Bobby Kennedy,

who, perhaps for the first time,
looked at her.

"But I am very worried," she said,

"about the state of the civilization

which produced that photograph
of the white cop

standing on that Negro woman's
neck in Birmingham."

Then she smiled.

And I am glad
that she was not smiling at me.

"Goodbye Mr. Attorney General," she said,

and turned and walked out of the room.

And then, we heard the thunder.

Baldwin:

...He stopped at his house
on the way to the airport

so I could autograph my books
for him, his wife and children.

I remember Myrlie Evers
standing outside, smiling,

and we waved,

and Medgar drove to the airport
and put me on the plane.

Months later, I was in Puerto Rico,

working on my play.

Lucien and I had spent a day or so

wandering around the island,

and now we were driving home.

(CAR RADIO PLAYING)

It was a wonderful, bright, sunny day,

the top to the car was down,
we were laughing and talking,

and the radio was playing.

- Then the music stopped...
- (MUSIC STOPS)

...and a voice announced
that Medgar Evers

had been shot to death
in the carport of his home,

and his wife and children
had seen the big man fall.

♪ Medgar Evers was buried
from the bullet he caught ♪

♪ They lowered him down as a king ♪

♪ But when the shadowy sun ♪

♪ Sets on the one ♪

♪ That fired the gun ♪

♪ He'll see by his grave ♪

♪ On the stone that remains ♪

♪ Carved next to his name ♪

♪ His epitaph plain: ♪

♪ Only a pawn in their game ♪

Baldwin: The blue sky seemed
to descend like a blanket.

And I couldn't say anything,
I couldn't cry.

I just remembered his face,

a bright, blunt, handsome face,

and his weariness,
which he wore like his skin,

and the way he said "ro-aad" for road.

And his telling me
how the tatters of clothes

from a lynched body hung,
flapping in the tree for days,

and how he had to pass that tree
every day.

Medgar.

Gone.

♪ Baby, please don't go ♪

♪ Baby, please don't go ♪

♪ Baby, please don't go
Back to New Orleans ♪

♪ You know I love you so
Baby, please don't go ♪

(SONG CONTINUES)

Baldwin: In America,
I was free only in battle,

never free to rest,

and he who finds no way to rest

cannot long survive the battle.

(AFRICAN SINGING AND DRUMMING)

And the young,
white revolutionary remains,

in general, far more romantic
than a black one.

White people have managed
to get through entire lifetimes

in this euphoric state,

but black people have not been so lucky.

A black man who sees the world
the way John Wayne,

for example, sees it...

would not be an eccentric patriot,

but a raving maniac.

The truth is that this country
does not know what to do

with its black population,

dreaming of anything like
"The Final Solution".

Baldwin: The Negro has never been

as docile as white Americans
wanted to believe.

That was a myth.

We were not singing
and dancing down the levee.

We were trying to keep alive,

we were trying to survive
a very brutal system.

The nigger has never
been happy in his place.

Baldwin: One of the most terrible things,

is that, whether I like it or not,

I am an American.

My school really was
the streets of New York City.

My frame of reference was...

George Washington and John Wayne.

But I was a child, you know,
and when a child puts his eyes

on the world, he has to use what he sees.

There's nothing else to use.

And you are formed by what you see,

the choices you have to make,
and the way you discover

what it means to be black in New York

and then throughout the entire country.

(GUN CLICKS)

I know how you watch, as you grow older,

and it's not a figure of speech,

the corpses of your brothers
and your sisters

pile up around you.

And not for anything they have done.

They were too young to have done anything.

But what one does realize
is that when you try to stand up

and look the world in the face
like you had a right to be here,

you have attacked
the entire power structure

of the western world.

Forget "The Negro Problem".

Don't write any voting acts.

We had that. It's called
The Fifteenth Amendment.

During the Civil Rights Bill of 1964,

what you have to look at is what
is happening in this country,

and what is really happening
is that brother

has murdered brother,
knowing it was his brother.

White men have lynched Negroes,
knowing them to be their sons.

White women have had Negroes burned,

knowing them to be their lovers.

It is not a racial problem.

It's a problem of whether or not
you're willing

to look at your life
and be responsible for it,

and then begin to change it.

That great western house
I come from is one house,

and I am one of the children
of that house.

Simply, I am the most
despised child of that house.

And it is because
the American people are unable

to face the fact that
I am flesh of their flesh,

bone of their bone, created by them.

My blood, my father's blood,
is in that soil.

Good afternoon, Ma'am.

It's raining so hard,

I brought rubbers and coat
to fetch my little girl home.

I'm afraid you've made some mistake.

Ain't this the 3B?

- Yes.
- Well, this is it.

It can't be it.

I have no little
colored children in my class.

Oh, thank you.

There's my little girl.

Peola, you may you home.

Boy: Gee, I didn't know she was colored.

Girl: Neither did I.

Peola: I hate you,
I hate you, I hate you!

Woman: Peola! Peola!

Baldwin: I know very well
that my ancestors

had no desire to come to this place.

But neither did the ancestors
of the people who became white,

and who require of my captivity a song.

They require a song of me,

less to celebrate my captivity
than to justify their own.

(SOFT PIANO MUSIC)

Baldwin: I have always
been struck, in America,

by an emotional poverty so bottomless,

and a terror of human life,
of human touch,

so deep that virtually no
American appears able to achieve

any viable, organic connection

between his public stance
and his private life.

This failure of the private life
has always had the most

devastating effect
on American public conduct,

and on black-white relations.

If Americans were not so terrified

of their private selves,

they would never have become so dependent

on what they call "The Negro Problem".

They said it wasn't nice to say "nigger".

Nigger!

Nigger! Nigger!

Poor little nigger kids,
love the little nigger kids.

Who loved me?

Who loved me?

Baldwin: This problem,
which they invented

in order to safeguard their purity,

has made of them criminals and monsters,

and it is destroying them.

(BAND PLAYING)

And this, not from anything
Blacks may or may not be doing,

but because of the role

of a guilty and constricted
white imagination

has assigned to the Blacks.

Look man, don't give me that look.

You should have got what was coming to you

after spitting in that guy's face.

Why you...

Baldwin: It is impossible to
accept the premise of the story,

a premise based on the profound
American misunderstanding

of the nature of the hatred
between black and white.

- Man: That time is now.
- (GRUNTS)

The root of the black man's
hatred is rage,

and he does not so much hate white men

as simply wants them out of his way,

and more than that,

out of his children's way.

(BOTH PANTING)

The root of the white man's
hatred is terror.

- (GRUNTS)
- I'm gonna kill you.

A bottomless and nameless terror,

which focuses on this dread figure,

an entity which lives only in his mind.

Run!

Come on!

I can't make it, I can't make it!

Baldwin: When Sidney jumps off the train,

the white liberal people downtown

were much relieved and joyful.

But when black people
saw him jump off the train,

they yelled, "Get back
on the train, you fool!"

The black man jumps off the train

in order to reassure white people,

to make them know that they are not hated,

that though they have made human errors,

they done nothing for which to be hated.

♪ I'm Chiquita Banana
And I'm here to say ♪

♪ I am the top banana... ♪

Baldwin: In spite of the fabulous myths

proliferating in this country

concerning the sexuality of black people,

black men are still used,
in the popular culture,

as though they had
no sexual equipment at all.

Sidney Poitier,
as a black artist, and a man,

is also up against the infantile,

furtive sexuality of this country.

Both he and Harry Belafonte, for example,

are sex symbols,
though no one dares admit that,

still less to use them as any of
the Hollywood he-men are used.

Black people have been robbed
of everything in this country...

I've got something to say to you, boy.

...and they don't want to be
robbed of their artist.

Black people particularly disliked

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner,

because they felt that
Sidney was, in effect,

being used against them.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner may prove,

in some bizarre way, to be a milestone,

because it is really quite
impossible to go any further

in that particular direction.

♪ If you ever plan to motor West... ♪

Baldwin: The next time,
the kissing will have to start.

Well, you've got your ticket?

Here you are.

Thank you.

Baldwin: I am aware
that men do not kiss each other

in American films, nor,
for the most part, in America

nor do the black detective
and the white Sheriff kiss here.

You take care, you hear?

Yeah.

But the obligatory, fade-out-kiss,

in the classic American film,
did not speak of love,

and still less of sex.

It spoke of reconciliation,

of all things now becoming possible.

- (RAIN POURING)
- (WINDSCREEN WIPERS THUDDING)

Baldwin: I knew a blond girl
in the village

a long time ago, and eventually,

we never walked out of the house together.

She was far safer
walking the streets alone

than when walking with me.

A brutal and humiliating fact

which thoroughly destroyed
whatever relationship

this girl and I
might have been able to achieve.

This happens all the time in America,

but Americans have yet to realize

what a sinister fact this is,

and what it says about them.

When we walked out in the evening, then,

she would leave ahead of me, alone.

I would give about five minutes,
and then I would walk out alone,

taking another route, and
meet her on the subway platform.

We would not acknowledge each other.

We would get into the subway car,

sitting at opposite ends of it,
and walk, separately,

through the streets
of the free and the brave,

to wherever we were going...
a friend's house, or the movies.

Man: All over the country,

families such this
are enjoying new prosperity.

They have new interests,
news standards of living,

a buying power
they've never enjoyed before.

There are good prospects

for practically all types
of goods and services.

All too often though,
they are overlooked prospects.

Since 1940, in San Francisco alone,

the Negro market has increased by 89%.

Here are millions of customers
for what you have to sell.

Customers with 15 billion dollars to spend

Baldwin: Someone once said to me

that the people in general
cannot bear very much reality.

He meant by this that they prefer fantasy

to a truthful recreation
of their experience.

People have quite enough reality to bear,

by simply getting through their lives,

raising their children,

dealing with the eternal conundrums

of birth, taxes, and death.

Negroes are continuously making
progress here in this country.

The progress in many areas
is not as fast as it should be,

but they are making progress,

and we will continue to make progress.

There's no reason that they, in
a near and foreseeable future,

that a Negro could also be
president of the United States

I remember, for example,

when the ex-Attorney General,
Mr. Robert Kennedy,

said that it was conceivable

that in 40 years in America,
we might have a Negro president.

And that sounded like
a very emancipated statement,

I suppose, to white people.

They were not in Harlem...

...when this statement was first heard.

And did not hear,
and possibly will never hear,

the laughter and the bitterness
and the scorn

with which this statement was greeted.

From the point of view of the
man in the Harlem barbershop,

Bobby Kennedy only got here yesterday.

And now he's already
on his way to the Presidency.

We've been here for 400 years
and now he tells us

that maybe in 40 years, if you're good,

we may let you become president.

♪ It was a dream,
Just a dream I had on my mind ♪

♪ It was a dream,
Just a dream I had on my mind ♪

♪ And when I woke up, baby ♪

♪ Not a thing could I find ♪

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

♪ I dreamed I was an angel
And had a good time ♪

♪ I dreamed I was satisfying
And nothin' to worry my mind ♪

♪ But it was a dream ♪

♪ Just a dream I had on my mind ♪

Baldwin: Let me put it this way,

that from a very literal point of view,

the harbors and the ports

and the railroads of the country,

the economy,

especially in the southern states,

could not conceivably be
what it has become

if they had not had,

and do not still have,
indeed, and for so long,

so many generations,

cheap labor.

(WESTERN MUSIC PLAYING)

Baldwin: It is a terrible thing

for an entire people

to surrender to the notion
that one ninth of its population

is beneath them.

And until that moment,
until the moment comes,

when we, the Americans,

we, the American people,
are able to accept the fact

that I have to accept, for example,

that my ancestors
are both white and black.

That on that continent we are
trying to forge a new identity

for which we need each other,

and that I am not a ward of America.

I am not an object of missionary charity,

I am one of the people
who built the country.

Until this moment,

there is scarcely any hope
for the American Dream,

because people who are denied
participation in it,

by their very presence...

...will wreck it.

And if that happens, it is a
very grave moment for the West.

- Thank you.
- (APPLAUSE)

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

David Schoenburn:
We're here in the studio today

with seven men who have
two things in common:

they are entertainers and artists;

and they've all come to Washington.

They are seven out of some
two hundred thousand

American citizens who came to the capital

to march for freedom and for jobs.

Will this tremendous outburst
now lead to a course of action,

Mr. Belafonte?

The now that is being
spoken about is the fact that

in a hundred years, finally,

through whatever the causes
have been in history,

and most of them have been
because of oppression,

the Negro people have strongly and fully

taken the bit in their teeth,

they're asking absolutely
no quarter from anyone.

But I do say that
the bulk of the interpretation

of whether this thing is going to end

successfully and joyously,

or is going to end disastrously,

lays very heavily
with the white community,

it lays very heavily with the profiteers,

it lays very heavily
with the vested interests.

It lays very heavily
with a great middle stream

in this country,

of people who have refused
to commit themselves,

or even have the slightest knowledge

that these things have been going on.

(OMINOUS MUSIC)

Baldwin: I am speaking as
a member of a certain democracy

in a very complex country,

which insists on being
very narrow-minded.

Simplicity is taken to be
a great American virtue,

along with sincerity.

I am sorry.

I am deeply sorry.

And I am sorry.

I'm deeply sorry about that.

They are no excuses.

I am solely...

We have made plenty of mistakes.

For that, I apologize.

I am very sorry.

I'm sorry I did this to you,
but you gotta get used to it.

It's one of those little problems in life.

I take full responsibility.

I'm here today to again apologize.

I'll just apologize for that to her.

For any mistakes I've made,
I take full responsibility.

It's an honor to serve
the city of Ferguson

and the people who live there.

Baldwin: One of the results of this

is that immaturity
is taken to be a virtue too.

So that someone like that,
let's say John Wayne,

who spent most of his time on screen

admonishing Indians,

was in no necessity to grow up.

Baldwin:

We were free and we decided
to treat ourselves

to a really fancy, friendly dinner.

The head waiter came and said
there was a phone call for me,

and my sister Gloria rose to take it.

She was very strange when she came back.

She didn't say anything,

and I began to be afraid
to ask her anything.

Then, nibbling at something
she obviously wasn't tasting,

she said, "Well, I've got to tell you

because the press is on its way over here.

They have just killed Malcolm."

There is nothing in the evidence

offered by the book
of the American republic,

which allows me really to argue
with the cat who says to me,

"They needed us to pick the cotton,

and now they don't need us anymore.

Now they don't need us,
they're gonna kill us all off,

just like they did the Indians".

And I can't say it's a Christian nation.

Though your brothers
will never do that to you,

because the record is
too long and too bloody.

That's all we have done.

All your buried corpses
now begin to speak.

I say violence is necessary.

Violence is a part of America's culture.

It is as American as cherry pie.

Black power, Brothers.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

(INDISTINCT SHOUTING)

(INDISTINCT SHOUTING)

Baldwin: If we were white,

if we were Irish, if we were Jewish,

if we were Poles, if we had, in fact,

in your mind, a frame of reference,

our heroes would be your heroes too.

Nat Turner would be a hero
for you instead of a threat.

Malcolm X might still be alive.

Everyone is very proud
of brave little Israel,

a state against which I have nothing,
I don't want to be misinterpreted,

I'm not an anti-Semite.

But, you know,
when the Israelis pick up guns,

or the Poles, or the Irish,

or any white man in the world says,

"Give me liberty, or give me death",

the entire white world applauds.

When a black man says
exactly the same thing,

word for word,

he is judged a criminal
and treated like one

and everything possible is done

to make an example of this bad nigger,

so there won't be any more like him.

Man: Look out across this land we love,

look about you whatever you are,
this unending scenic beauty,

and there's freedom,

it's an inherent American right

meaning many different things
to every single citizen.

It's a leisurely afternoon
of golf along a pleasant course.

It's an amusement park,
a rollercoaster ride.

A day at the county fair.

(FIRE CRACKLING)

A day of excitement,

unrestricted travel
across all our 50 states,

unlimited enjoyment of all these jewels

in the continent's crown.

For all of us, there's all of America,

in all of its scenic beauty,
all of its heritage of history,

all of its limitless opportunity...

We've dropped too many bombs
on Vietnam now.

(APPLAUSE)

Let us save our national honor!

Stop the bombing,

and stop the war!

(JAZZ MUSIC)

Baldwin: What I am
trying to say to this country,

to us,

is that we must know this.

We must realize this,

that no other country in the world

have been so fat
and so sleek, and so safe,

and so happy, and so irresponsible,

and so dead.

No other country can afford to
dream of a Plymouth and a wife

and a house with a fence,

and the children growing up safely

to go to college and to become executives,

and then to marry,

and have the Plymouth and the house

and so forth.

A great many people do not live this way,

and cannot imagine it,

and do not know that when
we talk about "democracy",

this is what we mean.

(AUDIENCE CHEERING)

Baldwin: The industry is compelled,

given the way it is built,

to present to the American people

a self-perpetuating fantasy
of American life.

Their concept of entertainment
is difficult to distinguish

from the use of narcotics.

What worries you about
them having black partners?

Do you think people are
gonna look down on them,

- or judge them?
- Yes, I think people look down.

(CHEERING)

Baldwin: To watch the TV screen
for any length of time

is to learn some really frightening things

about the American sense of reality.

We are cruelly trapped between
what we would like to be

and what we actually are.

And we cannot possibly become
what we would like to be until

we are willing to ask ourselves
just why the lives we lead

on this continent are mainly so empty,

so tame, and so ugly.

These images are designed not to trouble,

but to reassure.

They also weaken our ability
to deal with the world as it is,

ourselves as we are.

I would like to add someone
to our group here,

Professor Paul Weiss,

the sterling professor
of philosophy at Yale.

- (APPLAUSE)
- (PIANO MUSIC PLAYING)

Were you able to listen
to the show backstage?

I heard a good deal of it,

but then I was behind the whatsitmajig.

- Yes.
- So I heard only some of it.

Did you hear anything
that you disagreed with?

I disagreed with a great deal of it,

and of course, there's
a good deal I agree with.

But I think he's overlooking
one very important matter,

I think.

Each one of us,
I think, is terribly alone.

He lives his own individual life.

He has all kind of obstacles,
the way of religion or color

or size or shape or lack of ability,

and the problem is to become a man.

But what I was discussing
was not that problem, really.

I was discussing
the difficulties, the obstacles,

the very real danger of death

thrown up by the society
when a Negro, when a black man,

attempts to become a man.

All this emphasis
upon black man and white,

does emphasize something which is here,

but it emphasizes,
or perhaps exaggerates it,

and therefore makes us
put people together in groups

which they ought not to be in.

I have more in common with a black scholar

than I have with a white man
who is against scholarship.

And you have more in common
with a white author

than you have with someone
who is against all literature.

So why must we always
concentrate on color,

or religion, or this?

There are other ways of connecting men.

Baldwin: I'll tell you this.

When I left this country in 1948,

I left this country for one reason only,

one reason... I didn't care where I went.

I might've gone to Hong Kong,
I might have gone to Timbuktu.

I ended up in Paris,
on the streets of Paris,

with 40 dollars in my pocket
and the theory

that nothing worse
could happen to me there

than had already happened to me here.

You talk about making it
as a writer by yourself,

you have to be able then
to turn up all the antennae

by which you live,

because once you turn your back
on this society,

you may die.

- You may die.
- (APPLAUSE)

And it's very hard to sit at a typewriter,

and concentrate on that,

if you are afraid of the world around you.

The years I lived in Paris
did one thing for me:

they released me from
that particular social terror,

which was not the paranoia of my own mind,

but a real social danger visible
in the face of every cop,

every boss, everybody.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUD)

I don't know what most white
people in this country feel.

But I can only include what they feel

from that state of their institutions.

I don't know if white Christians
hate Negroes or not,

but I know we have a
Christian church which is white

and a Christian church which is black.

I know, as Malcolm X once put it,

the most segregated hour in American life

is high noon on Sunday.

That says a great deal for me
about a Christian nation.

It means I can't afford to trust
most white Christians

and I certainly cannot trust
the Christian church.

I don't know whether the
labor unions and their bosses

really hate me. That doesn't matter,

but I know I'm not in their unions.

I don't know if the Real Estate Lobby

has anything against black people,

but I know the Real Estate Lobby
is keeping me in the ghetto.

I don't know if the board of
education hates black people,

but I know the textbooks
they give my children to read,

and the schools that we have to go to.

Now, this is the evidence.

You want me to make an act of faith,

risking myself, my wife, my woman,

my sister, my children,

on some idealism which you assure me

exists in America,
which I have never seen.

- (APPLAUSE)
- Weiss: Hold on a second.

Baldwin: All of the Western nations

have been caught in a lie,

the lie of their pretended humanism.

This means that their history
has no moral justification,

and that the West has no moral authority.

(INAUDIBLE)

Baldwin: "Vile as I am,"

states one of the characters
in Dostoevsky's The Idiot,

"I don't believe in the wagons
that bring bread to humanity.

For the wagons
that bring bread to humanity,

may coldly exclude
a considerable part of humanity

from enjoying what is brought."

(EXCITED CHEERS)

For a very long time, America prospered.

This prosperity cost millions
of people their lives.

Now, not even the people who are
the most spectacular recipients

of the benefits of this prosperity

are able to endure these benefits.

They can neither understand
them nor do without them.

Above all, they cannot imagine
the price paid by their victims,

or subjects, for this way of life,

and so they cannot afford to know why

the victims are revolting.

(GUNSHOTS)

(SCREAMS)

Down!

- On the ground!
- Get on the ground, now!

Man: Damn, man!

(SCREAMING)

Baldwin: This is the formula

for a nation or a kingdom decline.

For no kingdom can
maintain itself by force alone.

Force does not work the way its
advocates think in fact it does.

- (YELLING)
- (GUNSHOTS)

It does not, for example,

reveal to the victim
the strength of the adversary.

(SCREAMS)

(GUNSHOTS)

On the contrary, it reveals the weakness,

even the panic of the adversary.

And this revelation
invests the victim with passion.

(JAZZ MUSIC)

Baldwin: There is a day in Palm Springs

that I will remember forever,
a bright day.

I was based in Hollywood,
working on the screen version

of the autobiography of Malcolm X.

This was a difficult assignment,

since I had known Malcolm, after all,

crossed swords with him,

worked with him,

and held him in that great esteem

which is not easily distinguishable,

if it is distinguishable,

from love.

Billy Dee Williams had come to town

and he was staying at the house.

I very much wanted Billy Dee
for the role of Malcolm.

The phone had been
brought out to the pool,

and now it rang.

And I picked up.

The record player was still playing.

"He's not dead yet,
but it's a head wound."

I have some very sad news for all of you,

and I think sad news
for all our fellow citizens

and people who love peace
all over the world.

And that is that Martin Luther King

was shot and was killed tonight.

(CROWD SCREAM)

Baldwin: I hardly remember
the rest of the evening at all.

I remember weeping, briefly,

more in helpless rage than in sorrow,

and Billy trying to comfort me.

But I really don't remember
that evening at all.

♪ Mother dear, May I go downtown ♪

♪ Instead of out to play, ♪

♪ And march the streets of Birmingham ♪

♪ In a Freedom March today? ♪

♪ But Mother, I won't be alone ♪

♪ Other children will go with me, ♪

♪ And march the streets of Birmingham ♪

♪ To make my country free ♪

Baldwin: The church was packed.

In the pew before me sat Marlon Brando,

Sammy Davis, Eartha Kitt.

Sidney Poitier nearby.

I saw Harry Belafonte
sitting next to Coretta King.

I have a childhood hand over thing

about not weeping in public.

And I was concentrating
on holding myself together.

I did not want to weep for Martin.

Tears seemed futile.

But I may also have been afraid,

and I could not have been the only one,

that if I began to weep,
I would not be able to stop.

I started to cry, and I stumbled.

Sammy grabbed my arm.

The story of the Negro in America

is the story of America.

It is not a pretty story.

What can we do?

Well, I am tired.

I don't know how it will come about,

I know that no matter how it comes about,

it will be bloody, it will be hard.

I still believe that we can do
with this country

something that has not been done before.

We are misled here
because we think of numbers.

You don't need numbers, you need passion.

And this is proven
by the history of the world.

The tragedy is that most of the people

who say they care about it do not care.

What they care about is
their safety and their profits.

♪ When I was laying in jail ♪

♪ With my back turned to the wall ♪

♪ When I was laying in jail ♪

♪ With my back turned to the wall ♪

♪ I just laid down
and dreamed I could... ♪

Baldwin: The American way of life

has failed to make people happier,

or make them better.

We do not want to admit this,
and we do not admit it.

We persist in believing

that the empty and criminal
among our children

are the result of some
miscalculation in the formula

that can be corrected.

That the bottomless and aimless hostility

which makes our cities among
the most dangerous in the world

is created and felt
by a handful of aberrants,

that the lack, yawning
everywhere in this country,

of passionate conviction,
of personal authority,

proves only our rather appealing
tendency to be gregarious

and democratic.

To look around the United States today,

is enough to make
prophets and angels weep.

This is not the land of the free.

It is only very unwillingly
and sporadically...

(GUN CLICKS)

...the home of the brave.

(GUNSHOT)

(SCREAMING)

- (GUNSHOT)
- (SCREAMING)

(SOBBING)

(GUNSHOT)

(CAMERA CLICKS)

Baldwin: I sometimes feel it
to be an absolute miracle

that the entire black population
of the United States of America

has not long ago
succumbed to raging paranoia.

People finally say to you,

in an attempt to dismiss
the social reality,

"But you're so bitter!"

Well, I may or may not be bitter,

but if I were, I would have
good reasons for it.

Chief among them that American
blindness, or cowardice,

which allow us to pretend
that life presents no reasons

for being bitter.

In this country,
for a dangerously long time,

there have been two levels of experience.

One, to put it cruelly,

can be summed up in the images
of Gary Cooper and Doris Day,

two of the most grotesque
appeals to innocence

the world has ever seen.

And the other,
subterranean, indispensable,

and denied, can be summed up, let us say,

in the tone and in the face
of Ray Charles.

♪ Hey mama, Don't you treat me wrong ♪

♪ Come and love your daddy
All night long ♪

♪ I know it's all right now Hey, hey ♪

♪ When you see me in misery ♪

♪ Come on baby, see about me ♪

Baldwin: There has never been
any genuine confrontation

between these two levels of experience.

♪ Should I be bad ♪

♪ Or nice? ♪

♪ Should I surrender? ♪

♪ His pleading words so tenderly ♪

♪ Entreat me ♪

♪ Is this the night that love ♪

♪ Finally defeats me? ♪

Baldwin: You cannot lynch me
and keep me in ghettos

without becoming
something monstrous yourselves.

And furthermore, you give me
a terrifying advantage.

You never had to look at me.

I had to look at you.

I know more about you
than you know about me.

Not everything that is faced
can be changed,

but nothing can be changed
until it is faced.

History is not the past.

It is the present.

We carry our history with us.

We are our history.

If we pretend otherwise,
we literally are criminals.

I attest to this.

The world is not white.

It never was white,

cannot be white.

White is a metaphor for power,

and that is simply a way of
describing Chase Manhattan Bank.

I can't be a pessimist,

because I'm alive.

To be a pessimist means
you have agreed that human life

is an academic matter,
so I'm forced to be an optimist.

I am forced to believe that we can survive

whatever we must survive.

But...

...the Negro in this country...

...the future of the Negro
in this country...

...is precisely as bright

or as dark as the future of the country.

It is entirely up to the American people

and not representatives.

It is entirely up to the American people

whether or not they are going
to face and deal with

and embrace the stranger
they have maligned so long.

What white people have to do
is try to find out,

in their own hearts, why it was necessary

to have a "nigger" in the first place,

because I'm not a nigger, I'm a man.

But if you think I'm a nigger,
it means you need him.

The question you've got to ask yourself,

the white population of this
country has got to ask itself,

North and South, because it's one country,

and for the Negro,

there is no difference between
the North and the South...

it's just a difference
in the way they castrate you,

but the fact of the castration
is the American fact.

If I'm not the nigger here
and you invented him,

you the white people invented him,

then you've got to find out why.

And the future of the country
depends on that,

whether or not it's able
to ask that question.

♪ ("THE BLACKER THE BERRY"
BY KENDRICK LAMAR PLAYS) ♪