“What is it you wanted me to reconcile myself? I was born here almost 60 years ago. I’m not going to live another 60 years. I always said ‘takes time.’ It is taken from my father, my mother’s time,” James Baldwin said in an interview in his later years is being revived by activists and public personalities, Zendaya between them. His grey hair and famous expression even more embedded, Baldwin added, “how much time do you want for your progress?”
“How much time do you want for your progress?”
The influential novelist, playwright, activist and would later die of stomach cancer at the age of 63 in 1987, four years before the los angeles police brutally attacked Rodney King, which sparked riots throughout the city, long before police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, leading to the demonstrations that were extended for one year; eight years before Trayvon Martin was born. How much more time?
In the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests over the death of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis, Baldwin’s writing and speeches on race in the united States are still echoing. In fact, during a recent virtual town hall, Barack Obama, said that there has been the re-reading of Baldwin’s 1963 book The Fire Next Time. The former president said: “it is frightening to observe how James Baldwin can put out a reality 50 years ago that sounds like it was written yesterday.”
Baldwin was brilliant, and his work still bear long-range, no matter the state of our nation, but tragically its relevance, it becomes a voice of the people continuously of their time, during the times of unrest and injustice. To learn more about Baldwin, his art and its impact, take a look at the following foundational, books, films, and speeches.
