the associate director of the programs and exhibitions and in my little moving room. thank you for tuning in to this day of conversations on the virtual stage from across the world in 1963 life magazine profile of james baldwin talks about reading his way through which is what became the schomburg center. but then you read it was the books that taught me the things that tormented me the most were the things that connected me to all the people who had ever been

alive. who says you can't read and write your way through a more just world. the festival that expands the notion of blackness and introduces us as scholars, poets, memoirs, those that write our joy and sorrow and wage and triumph and see new ideas into spark our imagination are helping us make sense of the past to come from the present and plan for the future. i want to say thank you to the authors and moderators on the virtual stage today. i will call out each name hoping you plan with us throughout the day from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. dimitri, shayna, alexandria,

yolanda and i think they are all authors and writers and thinkers who exhibit earlier this summer the center released a black liberation. i hope that you will create your own and added to the list we have created. you can find those books and more by visiting the website@schomburg.org. the center for research and culture is celebrating its 95 years in the world's leading cultural institutions devoted to the research and a vision and exhibition of material focused on experiences. archives with items that eliminate the history and culture and include figures like

james baldwin. we continue to navigate we've migrated online where you can access parts of our archival collections and improve the collections like the literary festival. please visit the website for more details. by the end of the center festival we will have engaged 35 authors and moderators leading to the diverse experiences of african descent and author of begin again. if you are watching this from the festival website, scroll down to the bottom. you can also shop the website and navigate between the three

stages and last but not least you can check out the full schedule of events and i should say one more thing you can rewatch all of the programs that have happened monday through thursday on a section called rewind. we will begin conversation with our colleagues who is the associate director of education at the schomburg center. following the conversation we will have time possibly for questions from the audience. so please submit your questions at any time and we will get to as many as possible. just a reminder if you are not on the center website then you can go to schomburg.com. we are recording archives that you the audience will not be part of the recording. thank you for tuning in and with

that said we introduce the amazing doctor eddie. >> i have so many questions for our first guest and as said, i promised to save time for your questions as well. now i'm thrilled to introduce the distinguished university professor and chair of the department of african-american studies at princeton university. he hails from mississippi and is a graduate of morehouse college in atlanta georgia and the author of several books including how race still enslaves the american soul and is here today to talk about his newest book, begin again.

james baldwin's america and its urgent lessons for our own. i understand he has a selection to read as we begin today. welcome. thank you for being here. >> let me thank the schomburg and kevin and especially you for allowing me the opportunity. i've decided to read from the introduction if that's okay. i arrived on a hot saturday morning the day after leaving new jersey. this was the beginning of my stay as the recipient on the eastern shoreastern shore of man 1809 escaping slavery at the age of 18. learned to read and write and attend class at yale university

he went on to become a minister and 49, the faculty awarded him an honorary doctorate and it was the first time i believe a european university bestowed an academic honor and here i was who wrote about religion and race in the united states flying across the world to accept an honor. i met james in american graduate student studying at heidelberg as i checked into my apartment house number two, number 64. he was charged with getting me settled on my first day. we walked up three flights of stairs with three weeks worth of clothes. the apartment was small. i immediately found myself the stove had two burners and the oven had a microwave.

i stood in my living room dining room that doubled as a couch then i spotted my desk. nothing else mattered after that. the apartment with its high ceilings and comfort wasn't his primary concern. this part of the campus and it is a stretch to describe it as any. all the buildings felt like they were constructed james waited for me outside. we were going to check out the grocery store.

one officer had his knee in the back and others twisted his arms. his plans fo pants were halfways legs and exposed. the police pressed his head down into the concrete as if they were trying to leave the imprint. with each attempt he let out a bloodcurdling scream. all eyes were on him as they watched intently without any real attachment. i watched them as they watched the police. their face had revealed nothing. i hadn't been there for two hours and they had a face pressed on the concrete with a knee in his back. he screamed again. i didn't understand his pain. i didn't know what they had done

if anything. i only knew that it was all too familiar. james turned deep red and for some reason felt the need to apologize to me. there is a kind of isolation being in a place where you do not know the language. words do not interrupt your vision and silence allows you to see differently. during my short time i took in the landscape of th the cobblese roads, the old buildings. one noticed a sadness perhaps the feeling of a place that had experienced devastation all war or the effect of having a u.s. military base shut down and the struggle of figuring out what would happen next. i saw the color here and there that played and heard the beauty and harshness of the language. whatever i was experiencing in

that moment, i wasn't in the united states and to my mind, that was a good thing. i didn't have to go on television and explain what happened at the train station. i didn't have to explain it to james either. i wondered at the time of this is what he initially felt when he lived abroad and escaped from the constant demand to deal with what was happening in the states and what was happening because of it. it became a refuge of sorts and whatever he faced at least he didn't have to deal with the barrage here and in the silence. it's exhausting to find one's self over and over again navigating the deadly assumptions and those who look like you to see and read about insights and harm and anguish for no other reason than because you're black oyou are black or r or black and for me the daily

grind consumed. i cannot escape the news. i'm drowning in it and all of the nastiness in the country that seems or feels like it is going underwater. heidelberg afforded some critical distance a refuge from it all. a small apartment, a place i did not know the language offered me an opportunity to be still, to quiet my head. and to think about my country and the moment we currently find ourselves in. there we go. >> thank you so much for that excerpt from the introduction. and as you speak it out loud, i'm thinking about the feelings so many people are having just this week that it's hurting and

feeling underwater in the news cycle. but why so often as a political commentator, what drew you back to the way to think about where we are right now? >> i've been thinking with baldwin for about 30 years ever since graduate school. although i was hesitant in graduate school to approach him because i knew what he would do to me. but he became one of the most important resources for how i made a sense of the world and how i make sense of democracy and how i read american pragmatism. so it is a kind of scholarly resource. every epigraph of the book except for the last chapter is

in epigraph from baldwin. in democracy in black, baldwin is the spine of the book as i am trying to engage aristotle at the screen door for me to say what i said in the book so finally i decided to bring him onto stage to get in from behind the scenes and add everything to do with my own attempt to grapple with my disillusionment and i knew what jimmy went through in the latter days of his career and i wanted to find the resources to grapple with my own disillusionment in the face of what it looks like and in the face of what is.

i had to make sense of it and jimmy was the first person i talked to. >> help us understand the title following on that spot about what is the sense at which you saw baldwin begin again and what is the sense of which -- it is an epic book with the gospel music at its core but it's this moment in the novel where the character says they are describing what is happening after the assassination and he says the dream was shattered and people scattered and we knew what we did. some were mad, some were killed, some in jail, some left the country and the like. but responsibility isn't lost, it is abdicated and if one

refuses abdication and begins again, it is echoed until they murdered the apostle of love but what does that say about the country? and he had to figure out how to pick up the pieces. after attempts of suicide and he worked, he found some respite in istanbul but he was still very fragile and vulnerable and although the wrap on race came out and it's the first manuscript in the assassination and there he is trying to pick up the pieces to give birth to that book and took everything so he's trying to grapple with the fact the country turned its back on the promise and sacrifice of the black freedom struggle and

not only had elected richard nixon and 68 and 72 but elected ronald reagan of all people so he was trying to make sense of that moment and of those that survived it and those of us who were coming of age and it so to answer the latter part of your question, i wanted to give an account of the latest betrayal. i wanted to give an account of all of those and write to all of those in 2014 and before to bring the country's attention to what the police was doing thinking about ferguson and all of those activists many of whom were dead, some in jail but some are dying in front of us and here the country doubled down on

this obviously unqualified human being. >> there is an interesting way and which baldwin in this book following baldwin's example in mining and interrogating the society and in doing so were trying to do so more honestly. and not giving up on people. i can't get over there are so many wonderful baldwin quips that you share with us in this book. let me just read one. this is the aftermath of king's

assassination. this is baldwin. most people in action yet every human being is an unprecedented miracle. one tries to treat them as the miracle they are while trying to protect oneself against the disasters they become. in writing this book and what you wrestled with and what baldwin is wrestling with, he has a lot of demons chasing him and as you say, he attempted suicide but for him to come out of these traumatic experiences in the movement, trying to reconcile people with disasters, it feels to me like a helpful resource.

>> that paragraph is so important because the first sentence of it is like since that tremendous day in atlanta, something has altered in me and has gone. about the messiness of the world we have to deal with our own interior lives. he is one of the critical voices for a certain kind of journalism that includes the autobiographical. so the way that we account for the world and implicate ourselves in it i barely

survived writing the book. almost drink myself into a stupa and part of that had to do with confronting as we've done these interviews the scaffolding is my own that became the precondition of speaking honestly about the country and about the misery as they call it the period of misery and it's in that moment the sentences on the page started to jump.

because he is in the archives in what is a rare manuscript in the book division that i found so many resources. as cornell west would describe them funkiness of human doing and suffering. back when we could physically be there i can't wait until we can get back. say something about your experience there of conducting research. >> it was wonderful.

then i would shoot over a quick e-mail to the folks and that isn't supposed to happen particularly given the demand during that time around baldwin's papers, i would be lucky and there would be space available and others would do some amazing things for me, but i would leave morning joe and make my way to the schomburg and it would be too early, so i would have to go around to the county common library. so i'm there kind of getting myself together but i'm in a suit and people would be giving me shout outs and everything and then i would make my way to the schomburg and it's there that i found this little memo baldwin

wrote on behalf of all of those that met with him and 63 on behalf of lorrain and harry belafonte and jerome smith. he is writing a note remember those little flip memo pads kind of expressing his own grief and sharing kennedy's grief with the death of his brother. using that suffering as the bridge or i was in the papers once reading baldwin's letter. or the letter that i found that was so amazing that i wrote about later that didn't make it into the book but this exchange

i used some of those paragraphs on twitter i would be in the library trying desperately not to shout. as you described they saw themselves as loyal and accountable to the activist but it seems particularly after that there is a tension in the

blackness and identity it is a kind of essential resource for organizing and struggling but also potentially attract. >> i think baldwin's relationship with power everything is complex and he never betrayed those young people. he promised them in 1963 in that apartment where they were drinking but he understood why they would save black power and

refused to let the nation dismiss them. he refused to let them dismiss them. he had to confront who they were fighting in the battles of the south. as you know we tend to tell the story wholly separate from the movement when they are some of the same actors. stokely carmichael was one of the most skilled organizers. he only broke the nonviolent disciplines once and that is when the king attacked -- the police attacked doctor king. so, baldwin understood black power. but he also understood its traps. he was worried about a certain preoccupation with blackness because the preoccupation was powerful according to baldwin. it should not have blinded us to

the moral question at the heart of the matter and that is who'd we take ourselves to be. and if we found ourselves fixating on a category that blames us to the humanity of the human being right in front of us, we can in fact become monstrous, tomac. so there is this ongoing critique of what he calls mystical. .. 2021. >>. >> so black is beautiful for this man in harlem in 1924 but

to assert that is a radical gesture to suggest we are finally left behind our internal on agreement what america says about us is powerful. but then also those with eldridge cleaver and sexuality who says that baldwin is the most a self hating black he is ever encountered but really what he wants to do that his hyper masculinity could not deal with the complexity of when. it hurt him deeply with baldwin. it was a wounded moment but yet baldwin did not portray. and he knew and understood the cost.

's. >> he keeps his public arrows aimed at white supremacy and what he calls the lie. there is a part in here where you say the innocence and the idea of american innocence needs to die. you talk about what you put forward as a way to think about america's history and i hear you inviting people into a new way of thinking of american history about facing things more squarely to put aside what baldwin calls the big lie. >> in 1962 essay entitled as much truth as one can bear now

to give a shout out to the late randall keenan became us access to many essays that we can find in the schaumburg collection. you know he is up there doing exactly what he does. we want to give all of his loved ones our prayers on his moss. but in that essay those wonderful wine the trouble is in us and until we confront our four years we can never build, i am paraphrasing the community to which we aspire so there is a sense that baldwin is always asking as he does in the 1965 essay in that issue of ebony on the white man's guilt when he says we

carry it within us so that is the essence instance that we confront what we have done because in order to change it would have to confront it did not confrontation with the possibility for us to be otherwise. that is key. so i write in the book the idea of american innocence needs to die but the idea of white america is irredeemable. but it doesn't follow from that. and that requires and honesty and the maturity that america is always avoiding and evading. we like our innocence. >> they are part of the book

where i am laughing out loud because you offer helpful ways to get out of the stuckness of the mainstream political discussion about race and class and working-class white people economic anxiety and trump voters in that particular portion is where i said preach. [laughter] my wife said what are you reading? on page 114 you say our task is not to save trump voters nor to demonize them but to work with every ounce of passion and every drop of blood we have to make the kingdom new. so one pack that. >> again, remember i am

walking gently and it no longer obtains and the academy of the year merely to baldwin that it represents a decline like to echo campbell's horrible formulation that baldwin's voice broke in 1963 and his aesthetics were subordinated to propaganda. that is just wrong. what is interesting is by walking conditions is known as the income to the book men conversation with that he is trying to do but the wonderful professor for african-american studies at the university of massachusetts amherst me baldwin's wind changed to say

he was no longer preoccupy to get white people to see themselves differently and that, what follows from that but then he still believes in jerusalem. and the way in which i read it's the reckoning so there is a formulation where he says the relatively few doing together so what is the consistent thread? is not turning his back on white people. but we don't have a finite amount of civic energy and spend so much time trying to convince those who are committed to our views we

don't have enough energy to build the world we are trying to build. and then we compromise and we have to bear the point of the compromise. like general kelly you want to compromise with the south? what the hell does that mean cracks. >> it means holding us hostage we see it now with the reagan and democrats constantly trying to convince them to love them again and so here we are sparing our energy are bearing the brunt of that compromise we should be trying to build the world for it to breathe. that is my energy and if the like-minded folks want to be white join in, then holly

louis up. >> a couple more question questions, building off of that one of the things you back and with to the end of the book is your own way their own stance and 2017 election and then to rethink the way you understood that using baldwin's ideas of race so walk us through with the place of elections. >> with democracy and back i have a moment where i am confronting this reality of how american politics works

and black cloak are treated as cattle chewing could to be herded to the polls and what scientists call or how they describe us as the capture electorate the way in which we participate in the dumbest one - - process is distorted because of the way the republican party figures itself we are stuck every somebody promises something to us in and takes us for granted we found ourselves for eight years during the obama presidency and the great recession and obama declared that the president of black america about all america.

you not the president of lgbt america you are the president of women but you are addressing it we want you to respond to us as the constituency that voted for you at 90 percent. so this is the triangulation from clinton so i thought we had an opportunity in the 2016 election cycle to break the back of clinton is them. i will fiction soil of the novel blindness. so we turn out in massive numbers and of the democratic party does not put forward an agenda that keeps to our suffering than we leave the presidential ballot plank. in the.one --dash nominated trumpet that this is an interesting opportunity because there is no way the country will elect somebody so obviously unqualified. that was my first mistake i

overestimated the way folks. that was my first mistake. but then as a lifelong leader of and i should have known better. to say the trump is dangerous where we need to do is a battleground staple for hillary clinton if not we can do something still trying to push the democratic party and tired of the black political class we need to address our misery and circumstance it didn't work and looking back on it it's a mistake a pay for every single day pressure listen to germany one - - jimmy sometimes you have to vote to buy yourself some time. i will admit it.

even is not enough for some clinton supporters because they want us to shut up and be quiet and follow orders. but if you're free of innocence and willing to take the risk and make a mistake and admitted. most of us forget that jimmy carter was the first before reagan. that policy and austerity in the way he turned his back with the terms of urban policy jesse jackson other said we have been betrayed. is service didn't want to make a choice even though reagan was us.

to be as notorious as george wallace. >> we are getting some questions we're almost there and offer some audience questions to you. your idea as a resource for people today who are hurting and about baldwin going to in stemple but it seems like retreating to turkey even when he was not a person of means and said i'm broke. maybe can do trans-atlantic travel but even not across the notion you write about it that way but you write about as finding and elsewhere as one

of the ways and what does it mean to people who are hurting? to draw themselves together to move forward. >>. >> i was supposed to go to in stemple and to be trace baldwin steps and do that but as a critic of trump and no 11 --dash no 11 - - one in said we are always asking them and extracting from them and remember, i am writing to them with them in mind so this is how the chapter emerge. and did not like the word he described himself as a trans-atlantic commuter is not

an exiled and how do i describe what he is doing to get the requisite distance from this place to say something about it and elsewhere came to mind. and to be honest, when you look at this extraordinary film from another place , there's a moment when he is standing on the balcony and he hear something and turns around and his brow is old and then his face explodes with laughter we have to find communities that allow us to laugh a full belly laugh and relationships that will allow us to rage and cry and feel

vulnerable. not because we're on television or your director of whatever but people who love us because of who we are in that community gives you strength. the up you up. we need that community of love expanding that over and over and how to create the distance that can turn our eyes bloodshot because living in this moment we have to find a way to disengage and that is solidarity those who critique day in and day out and get distance because we are constantly facing the temptation of the bribe.

that is just to become quiet in the face of the injustice and then just be invested in your own brand and go outside to promote to get your paper right as opposed to those communities to laugh a full belly laugh and we need a distance to speak the truth of the circumstances of our lives to replenish with the fight again because he had to figure how to get up he had to figure how to find the language because the storm keeps coming to give us the resources we

all have to have the elsewhere. >> thank you for that. >> taking questions from the audience, can you talk about the value gap from democracy and black? >> i will take this quickly that is the true line of american history and that is the belief that white people matter more than others and then to distort this position and her character so much so that abraham lincoln cannot become the kind of man that is required precisely because he believes why people matter more than others so that's different with jim crow and in the context of a black man in the white house. but we live in a society that reflect the somebody has a value more than others that

even a cop that mrs. killing rihanna taylor and friends the lives of the white neighbors and just shooting and then to be held to account. a messenger they land on how to pass that compromise who feels they don't have autonomy from the prescribed curriculum this is a in washington state perhaps the compromises embedded in a lot of school curriculums.

they are in the school. >> and there's always a way we can use that material to guide us. i can teach walt whitman there is a way i can teach democratic ideals to put my students eyes we have been missing on constraints for a long time. so i can teach notes on the state of virginia thomas it one - - thomas jefferson and i can give a whole lecture on racial habits just by reading the note notes. so we have to do is to be subversive within the constraints as we continue to bring questions to bear politically on the way in which we teach our children. but you can do that work in the classroom we just have to be creative.

>> that's a great answer because baldwin is not on the curriculum everywhere all the feels like he's coming out more and more that this is a moment like a new interest in baldwin the library of america coming out with a new anthology and your book. why do you think baldwin weiss is a moment for him? >> it has to do with black lives matter you have this movement in front of it is clear men and women and trans and there is a way that black lives matter so jimmy makes sense as a resource but i also think that baldwin is the most decisive critic of race democracy we've ever produced so it makes sense i'm surprised about my book.

but i'm talking about the late baldwin because i was worried that you cannot run past the rage or the condemnation and indictment if you want to embrace it, embrace all of it and they say that to black brothers and sisters i don't mean agree i mean grapple with him. all of them. >> i think your book is a helpful resource for people

trying to do the grappling because that's what you are doing in this book you are grappling with baldwin. we have to leave it there but thank you so much i appreciate it. it has been a treat. please pick up again again didn't go to the schaumburg shop to get a copy.