AMY GOODMAN: Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan has a warning for America. He says the U.S. is running out of time to make amends for taking land from Native Americans and others. And he says government will not be able to lie to people in the future as it has in the past and send young people to die in wars that keep corporate greed in power. Farrakhan says America should atone for its injustices. On the second anniversary of his Million Man March in Washington, Farrakhan had called yesterday a Holy Day of Atonement. Speaking to a crowd in Chicago, Farrakhan thanked Blacks who did not go to work as he had asked. He also thanked employers who let their workers take the day off with no penalty.

Today on Democracy Now!, we thought we’d go back in time, after this second anniversary of the Million Man March, to another great march in U.S. history, and that was the March on Washington in 1963. In a little while, we’re going to play a speech by James Baldwin, author, activist, poet James Baldwin. It’s a speech he gave a few weeks after the March on Washington. He was exhilarated there, but not in the speech, because it was also right after the bombing of the Birmingham church in which four little African American girls were killed. But before we go to that speech, we thought we’d turn first to another rare recording of James Baldwin, and that is a debate between Baldwin and Malcolm X. This was a debate in 1960. It begins with Malcolm X.

MALCOLM X: First, I would like to say that I am speaking, not for myself, but as a follower and helper and representative of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, who is the spiritual head of the fastest-growing group, religious group, of Black people here in the Western Hemisphere. And when we give our views, we don’t give them as a civic group. We don’t give them as a political group. But we give them primarily as a religious group. And any solution that we set forth, we absolutely feel that it’s a religious solution rather than a political solution.

One of the reasons that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, in teaching us here in America, is giving us a solution that differs drastically from the sit-in movement, he’s trying to make us men. Now, the very fact that you find students all over the world today are standing up for their rights and fighting for their rights, but here in America the so-called Negro students have allowed themselves to be maneuvered under a tag of sit-in. Actually, I guess it describes — the name describes its nature. It’s a passive thing. And if their goal is integration, it’s not a worthwhile one. But if their goal is freedom, justice and equality, then that’s a worthwhile goal. If integration is going to give the Black people in America complete freedom, complete justice and complete equality, then it’s a worthwhile goal. The holding this integration bottle and dangling it in front of the Negroes in America today has actually disabled them, or it has nullified their ability to stand up and fight like a man for something that is theirs by right, rather than to just sit around and beg and wait for the white man to make up his mind that they’re worthy to have this type thing.

I think that this is, in my opinion, why we disagree with the sit-in movement. If they are willing to wait for another hundred years for the white man to change his mind to accept them as a human being, then they’re wrong. But if they’re willing to lay down their life tonight, or in the morning, in order that we can have what is ours by right tonight, or in the morning, then it’s a good move. But as long as they’re willing to wait for the white man to make up his mind that they are qualified to be respected as human beings, then I’m afraid that all of their waiting and their planning is for naught.

As Thurgood Marshall said on New Year’s Eve, the Supreme Court brought about the desegregation decision, I think six or seven years ago, and there is only 6% desegregation in America right now. We don’t call two students, Black students, going to University of Georgia integration, nor do we call four children, Black children, going to school in New Orleans integration, nor do we call a handful of Black students going to school in Little Rock integration. If every Black man in the state of Arkansas can’t go to any school he want, that’s not integration. And if every Black child in the state of Louisiana cannot go to any school that they are qualified for in the morning, then that’s not integration. And likewise with Georgia and any other state in America. It’s no integration with us, until the entire thing is given — is laid on the table, not a hundred years from now, but in the morning. And at the rate that the NAACP, CORE and the Urban League is willing to accept of attitude in the white man’s mind, we who are Muslims feel we’ll be sitting around here in America for another thousand years, not waiting for civil rights or something like that, but even waiting to be granted the rights of a human being.

JAMES BALDWIN: I have the feeling that a great many words have been floating around, have been floating around this table, which need to be redefined. And that, by the way, is a problem, I think, which faces this entire country. And I don’t agree with Mr. X about the sit-in movement. And I do know something about the war, incipient war, between the students and some of the leaders. I know the gap, the enormous gap, between the NAACP and the children in the South. I don’t agree that the sit-in — you know, I don’t agree that it is necessarily passive. I think it demands a tremendous amount of power, both in one’s personal life and in terms of political or polemical activity, sometimes to sit down and do nothing, or seem to do nothing. But finally, when the sit-in movement started, or when a great many things started in the Western world, it was not — I think it had a great deal less to do with equality than it had to do with power. And I do think we have to talk about — we have to decide what we want.

Now, what has happened in the world in relation to Black people is not that white people have suddenly changed or become more conscious of the Black man’s humanity. What has happened is very simple, which is that white power has been broken. And this means, among other things, that it is no longer possible for an Englishman to describe an African and make the African believe it. It’s no longer possible for a white man in this country to tell a Negro who he is, and make the Negro believe this. The controlling image is absolutely gone. Now, it seems to me the responsibility which faces us then, the question which faces us, which faces me, in any case, is, since there is a distinction between power and equality, there is a distinction between power and freedom — and I know that in terms, for example, of Africa, that an African nation cannot expect to be respected unless it is free. I know that unless it has its political destiny in its own hands, which is what we mean by power, there is no hope that the English will deal with an African nation — they will deal with an African nation as a subjugated nation as long as it is in fact subjugated.

Now, this is not quite the same situation that we face here in America as American Negroes. I can see that I might very well, for one reason or another, leave this country tomorrow and never come back. But this will not make me — this will not cease — I will not cease to be an American Negro for this reason. And the history of — our history in this country is something that I think we have to face, especially since we’re demanding that white people face it. And whether I like it or not, whether you like it or not, this issue about integration is a false issue because we have been integrated here ever since we got here. I am no longer a pure African. There are no pure Africans in this country. The history which has produced us is something which, in any case, we’re going to have to deal with one of these days. And I think it is a mistake to pretend this history did not happen.

What we’re arguing about, I think — one of the things, in any case, I think I would be arguing about is the effect of this on the Negro world and the great divisions in it, so that it does in fact range from people who imagine they are white, you know, who never talk to Negroes, to people who imagine that if they can make a buck, they will somehow beat the system, to homeless and demoralized Black boys and girls who have nowhere — who don’t know where to go. The issue, it seems to me, the reason that the sit-in movement is important, the reason this whole ferment is of such importance, is not that I want anybody’s cup of coffee or even to go particularly to anybody’s school; it is because the country cannot afford — the country cannot afford to have, as it has at this moment, millions of Black boys and girls in various ghettos all over the country either perishing literally or perishing, I must say, finally, with the kind of demoralization and bitterness and hatred which can, after all, blow this country wide apart.

My quarrel with the official Negro leadership and my quarrel with those such Negroes that imagine they are integrated or imagine they somehow escaped the Negro condition is they are not willing to do what I think is absolutely essential. One has got to reexamine the basis, the standards of this country, which do not only afflict Black people. They afflict the entire country. No one in this country, as far as I can see, really knows any longer what it means to be an American. He does not know what he means by freedom. He does not know what he means by equality. We live in the most abysmal ignorance of not only the condition of 20 million Negroes in our midst, but of the whole nature of the life being lived in the rest of the world. And I think that the American white man, the republic, is paying, is beginning to pay for his treatment of the Negro in terms of what he does not know about the rest of the world.

You cannot live, it seems to me, in — you cannot live 30 years, let’s say, with something in your closet, which you know is there, and pretend it is not there, without something terrible happening to you. By and by, what I cannot say — if I know that any one of you, you know, has murdered your brother, your mother, and the corpse is in this room and under the table, and I know it and you know it, and you know I know it, and we cannot talk about it, it takes no time at all before we cannot talk about anything, before absolute silence descends. And that kind of silence has descended on this country. I think that this country has become almost inconceivably radical overnight. It has really got to do something it has not done before, and this involves the humanity of everybody in it. And the key to this is in the Negro. If one can face that, one can face anything. But that has not been faced. And I think this is the reason for the confusion and the ferment and the great, great danger.

Again, let me say this, and I will stop. I am not religious. And therefore, since I am not religious, all theologies, for me, are suspect. All theologies have a certain use. But I never, for example, believed in the myth of the virgin birth, and I never quite understood why it was necessary to propagate such a peculiar notion. Therefore, you know, as theologies go, it seems to me the Muslim theology is just as good as any. One cannot quarrel with it there. I can’t anyway. But I personally — I personally reject that theology as I reject all others, and I don’t think that we need it.

Now, this is a great — this is a gamble. This is a very reckless thing to say. And perhaps, you know, I’m — perhaps this is very mystical. I know the kind of world I would like to see. I would like to think of myself as not needing to be supported by a myth. I would like to think of myself as being able to face whatever it is I have to face as me, dealing with what I have and what that is, without having my identity dependent on something which, finally, has to be believed, which cannot be tested. This is why one is converted to a religion, you know. I think that there is something very dangerous in it.

What I would like to see, and maybe we will never live to see it, is a world in which these things are not necessary, in which I will not need to invent, in effect, a heritage and a history, but I can deal with the one I have, and will not need, in order to — in order to deal with the rest of the world, will not need to feel superior to them, but simply be a part of them. And it seems to me this may happen, rather than, obviously, a world in which there are no Blacks, there are no whites, where it does not matter, because as long as it does matter, as long as it does matter, and it doesn’t matter who is wearing the shoe, the confusion will be great, and the bloodshed will be great.

MALCOLM X: Well, I, as a Black man, and proud of being a Black man, I can’t conceive of myself as having any desire whatsoever to lose my identity. I wouldn’t want to live in a world where none of my kind existed. And I do think that the Negro, the American so-called Negro, is the only person on Earth who would be willing to lose his identity in what you might call a new product. I heard one fellow say one day that eventually intermarriage and intermixing would take place on such a vast scale that it would produce a chocolate-colored race. And Martin Luther King was in a discussion, televised discussion, with a white newspaperman. I saw it on the television a couple months ago. And this white newspaperman put this to him. He said — he pointed out that he’s proud of his white race. He’s proud of what he is. He’s proud of his racial characteristics, to the extent where he has no desire to lose it by mixing with any other race. And the thing that he said he couldn’t understand was why the so-called Negroes don’t have the same racial pride that whites have in trying to retain their characteristics. And Martin Luther King never answered him, although he should have answered him.

AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to a debate between Malcolm X and James Baldwin in the early 1960s. We’re going to come back to it in just a minute here on Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!

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AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, as we’re going back through the archives to a debate between Malcolm X and author James Baldwin in the early 1960s. After that, we’re going to bring you a speech that James Baldwin gave in 1963 after the March on Washington, and it was also right after the bombing of the Birmingham church in which four little girls, or little African American girls, died. But back to James Baldwin and Malcolm X.

MALCOLM X: I think that it’s disastrous for the Black people in America to reach the point where their racial pride disappears, and they don’t want — they don’t care whether their blood is mixed up with someone else’s.

I think that also one of the things that brings this about, as the Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us, the very fact that you have to refer to the Black man in America as a “Negro” shows you that right there something is wrong. An African doesn’t accept this term “Negro.” And you find they teach us in the educational system of this country that “Negro” is a Spanish word that’s supposed to mean “black.” Yet, when you find the Black people who live in Spanish-speaking countries of South and Central America, they don’t accept the word “Negro” to identify themselves. No one allows himself to be classified under the word “Negro” but the Black man here in America who is a descendant of the slaves. And very seldom is it ever applied to anybody but the Black man in here, here in America, who is the descendant of the slaves. When you ask a man his identity, he should use a word that connects him with a culture. If you ask him his nationality, it should connect him with a nation, like if I ask a man his nationality and he says, “German,” that connects him with Germany. Or if he says — even if he says, “German American,” it still connects him with having originated — his family, his history, has originated in Germany. If he says he’s French American, it connects him with France. But when you ask the Black man in America and he tells you Negro, he doesn’t put any other — he doesn’t put any other country in front; he puts “American Negro,” or he’ll just say, “Negro.” This doesn’t identify him. And usually, when you find a man who calls himself a Negro, he can’t tell you what language that he spoke before he came to this country. It’s of no consequence, no interest. He believes that prior to coming here, he was a savage in the jungle, and therefore he had no language, and this justifies his lack of knowledge concerning that mother tongue today.

And the history, as Mr. Baldwin pointed out, of the white man here in America and the Black man here in America points up the fact that the Negro, or the man here who calls himself a Negro, is just an ex-slave. If he is an ex-slave — I’d rather say he’s still a slave, but he’s wearing his slavemaster’s name, the name that was given to him during slavery. He’s speaking the language of the man who made him a slave, because he has no knowledge of his own tongue. He only knows the history, his own history, as taught to him by his former slavemaster, who purposely hid from him his own history to make him think that he was an inferior being before being brought here.

And Mr. Muhammad teaches us that until the Black man here in America is connected or reestablished or given some knowledge of his existence prior to coming here to America, his own appraisal of himself will be so low that he’ll actually think that the white man is doing him a favor to let him be here in America, no matter what his status is. And he also — and this is one of the reasons today why he fights so hard, some of them, to sit down next to the white man. They actually think that the white man is the personification of perfection. And whenever they’re allowed to go live in his neighborhood or sit in his restaurant or mingle or socialize with him, that they have attained, that they have made progress. But when they go back and study the history of their own people and the accomplishments of their own people, the civilizations and cultures, Black civilizations and Black cultures that existed in Africa, at a time when the whites in Europe were living a cave-like existence, then immediately their appraisal of themselves begins to go higher, and they don’t think that to beg somebody to mingle with them in this country is any kind of progress whatsoever.

And I would like to say one more thing, too, on that nonviolent thing, that the Black man in America is the only one who is encouraged to be nonviolent, or the Black man in Africa or the Black man in Asia. Never do you find white people encouraging other whites to be nonviolent. Whites idolize fighters. They idolize the Hungarian freedom fighters who came to this country and right now can work on jobs that the sit-in students can’t get, can live in neighborhoods that the sit-in students can’t live in, and can go into public places that the student sit-ins can’t go, because they are fighters. Everyone loves a fighter. They respect a fighter. But at the same time that they admire these fighters, they encourage the so-called Negro in America to get his desires fulfilled with a sit-in stroke or a passive approach or a love-your-enemy approach or pray for those who despitefully use you. This is insane.

And we feel, as Muslims, until we see white people practicing this nonviolence — take Pearl Harbor. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the American white man didn’t say, “Pray for the Japanese, and let them now bomb Manhattan or Staten Island.” No, they said, “Praise the lord, but pass the ammunition.” And if anybody comes along, like Mr. Muhammad, and begins to point out uncompromisingly, in blunt terms that don’t need interpretation or diplomatic language that can be misinterpreted, and he begins to point out these atrocities and crimes that have been committed against Black people here in America today, the white man can never deny the fact that he’s guilty, but he’ll always say, “Well, forget the past, and let’s look forward.” But the only people who are told to forget the injustices that have been done to them are the Black people.

But when it comes to whites, right today, you can turn on any radio, turn on any television, read any newspaper, and the Jews have magnified to the world the crimes that were committed against them 20 years ago or so by Eichmann, and they keep you sitting on the edge of your seat wanting to strangle Eichmann and strangle the Germans. This is a — it’s almost like a hate Germany campaign. But yet the Jews are never accused of teaching hate because they remind the world of the crimes that were committed against them.

But when the Black man here in America begins to stand up and speak about the crimes that are committed against him throughout America every day, no let up, just different forms, immediately a Black man who dwells on that is considered a racist, considered an extremist or considered someone who is advocating a doctrine that will bring about violence and bring about a deterioration in the so-called good relations that are supposed to be developing between Black and white in this country. So, we just can’t go along with any of that.

And I think that this is the thing that the white people of America should realize, that Mr. Muhammad’s teaching — and it’s spreading, so you have to deal with it — Mr. Muhammad’s teaching doesn’t teach the Black man to wait for the white man to change his mind. Mr. Muhammad’s teaching is changing the Black man’s appraisal of himself and changing the Black — and as soon as the Black man undergoes a reappraisal of himself and realizes that he’s a man, too, he says to himself: Why should he wait for the Supreme Court to give him what a white man has when he’s born? Why should he wait for the Congress or the Senate or the president to tell him that he should have this, when if he’s a man the same as that man is a man, he doesn’t need any president, he doesn’t need any Congress, he doesn’t need any Supreme Court, he doesn’t need anybody but himself to bring about that which is his, if he is a man?

JAMES BALDWIN: I think we — I think, in the first place, there’s some disagreement between Mr. Malcolm X and myself as to what this heritage is. And I want to go back to that in a minute. There’s something else, at the moment, that bothers me, that I think there’s a great deal — there’s a lot of — there’s not much clarity in this question of violence, from my point of view, from where I sit, whether or not — no matter what Mr. X wants, no matter what I want. I believe, for example, that one of these days, maybe tomorrow, Birmingham, Alabama, will probably blow up. And if Birmingham blows up, it will not just stretch to Atlanta. It will stretch to Boston. There’s a kind of fuse. There’s a kind of — there’s an undercurrent. There’s something which unites all Negroes in this country, so that what happens in Birmingham can blow up Harlem. It has happened before. And unless we are extremely swift and miraculously swift, it will happen again. I take it — I take violence — I’m trying to say this: I take it as given…

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AMY GOODMAN: You’ve been listening to a debate between James Baldwin and Malcolm X in the early 1960s from the Pacifica Archives, very rare, to say the least, here on Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman. In the background, Bunny Wailer was singing “Redemption Song.” But now we’re going to turn to — as James Baldwin was speaking in that discussion about Birmingham and the fact that it was going to blow up, we’re going to turn now to the moments right after the Birmingham bombing. James Baldwin was speaking — it was right after the March on Washington in August of 1963, organized with the tremendous energy of Bayard Rustin, and James Baldwin was involved with that, but he was angry. He was angry because, in Birmingham, Alabama, right after that march, four African American girls were blown up in this bombing of the Birmingham church. And this is James Baldwin speaking in New York in 1963.

JAMES BALDWIN: Good evening. I hope that nobody will think I’m copping a plea if I say I’m a little tired. And so, if you can’t hear me up there, you have to let me know. Now, before I begin, let me say this. I have set — arbitrarily, I have set us the somewhat delicate task of discussing our common trouble tonight. That is, there are some things that I want to talk about, to suggest to you, and then I want to find out what you think, and perhaps we can establish a dialogue. And if we are extremely disciplined and hard-headed, passionate and moral, we might be able even to rock that rock which is called Washington.

I don’t think — I know, in fact, that when this meeting was envisioned on the 28th of August in Washington, when Bayard suggested that we ought to have some kind of open discussion about what follows the Washington march, obviously, Bayard — neither Bayard nor I nor any of you supposed that less than four weeks later we would be representatives of a nation which is, or which certainly ought to be, in mourning.

Now, I have to say some very reckless things tonight, and so I want to make it absolutely clear that I’m talking for myself. I am not — I might be at other platforms on other occasions more or less representing this or that organization or this or that committee, but tonight I am talking to you as Jimmy Baldwin, who was born in Harlem 39 years ago, who has a certain responsibility to the people that produced him — that is, all of you. And I’m speaking to you, if I may say so, not as an organizer and not as a Negro leader and not as a public figure, not as any of those things, but as one of the poets that you produced.

We have to talk about economics tonight. And in some detail, we must talk about morals. And I think, in some detail, we must talk about something even more difficult to put one’s finger on, which for the moment we will call “morale.” And the assumption on which I am speaking is this: that whether or not we like it, we have reached a point, Black and white in this country, where all of the previous systems of communication, negotiation, accommodation have become unusable.

To discuss the economics first, a few days ago, it was suggested by some of us, as forcefully as we knew how, that in order for the country to be unable to ignore and to forget the slaughter of six children in an American city, and in order to join the issue and bring the battle to where the battle really is — that is to say, to strike at the economic structure — that no one, Black or white, should buy any presents for Christmas. I think that we should spell this out perhaps a little more precisely. I mean, and now I’m speaking for myself, that in this Christian nation, Christmas is mainly, as indeed are most churches, a commercial endeavor, having nothing whatever to do with the birth or the death of Christ, that if one begins to serve notice, ultimately on the banks, that we, the citizens of this country, do not consider that we have the right to celebrate Christmas this year, and that, furthermore, we will use every weapon in our power to force this on the attention of the American republic, which, unluckily, I have to say, has its conscience mainly in its pocketbook, I believe that we will begin to see some notion of our potential power.

Let me put it this way. Before this country established, when the country was being established — and this is apart from what one’s textbooks say and in contradistinction to the television myths about the building, the discovery of America — the people who came to America, as it turns out, were neither heroes, saints nor pilgrims. They were simply people who couldn’t make it where they were, and that is why they came.

AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to James Baldwin speaking in 1963 after the famous March on Washington, but also right after the bombing of the Birmingham church, where four little African American girls were killed. James Baldwin, author and poet and civil rights activist, he died on November 30th, 1987. We’ll be back with his speech in just a minute here on Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!

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AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, as we return to the speech that author, poet, activist James Baldwin gave in 1963, soon after the Birmingham bombing, the bombing at the Birmingham church in which four African American girls were killed.

JAMES BALDWIN: They came here to make, as we like to say, a better life for themselves and their children. And as it turned out, and as it always does indeed turn out, what they meant by a better life for themselves and their children was the opportunity to make more money and oppress somebody else — which is what they did.

The Indians have vanished, except for those we have under protective custody. And in order to build a country, it was necessary to find a source of cheap labor, and therefore, 400 years later, I represent the only man who never wanted to come here. But if I had not come, under double coercion of the Bible and the gun, I very much doubt that we would have all those railroads, and cotton would never have become king, and, in short, the American economy would be, at best, a very different matter. Now, if we had the economic weight to line the track and dam the rivers and hoe the cotton and also raise the children, we can now use that weight for the first time for ourselves and for the liberation of this country.

It is not true that there is nothing Negroes can do to help themselves, A. And, B, it is not true that we, this nation, must be perpetually blackmailed by our government. The government represents us. And finally, C, neither is it true, as so many of the Negro’s friends would have us believe, that the only terms on which we can move to freedom are the terms of Harry Ashmore or Harry Golden. We, the people, are responsible for our own freedom. We are not begging for it. It is up to us to take it.

Mr. Livingston said a little earlier something I would like to paraphrase. He said, quoting a friend of his in Birmingham, that the only thing worse than being Black in Birmingham is being Black and white together. But I would like to paraphrase that a little bit, speaking now of morality, that the only thing worse these days than being a Black man in America is being a white man in America. I mean that we are living in a segregated society, which does not mean, as people imagine, that it is simply I who am segregated. It means you are. We all are. And we cannot talk to each other, because of the force of social custom and the tyranny of the Southern oligarchy.

When I talk about economics, therefore, I am trying to suggest to you, to all of you, that all of you begin to think in very concrete terms. For example, Birmingham is a monstrous city indeed, but Birmingham is not really any worse than New York. There is no place — there is not one square inch of American soil in which a Black man can be considered to be free. And if that is so for Black men, that is true for all of us. New York is not a segregated city by an act of God or by accident. It is a segregated city partly because a vast number of people and a vast complex of interests make a tremendous profit on the blood of Black boys and girls, on the continued imprisonment and the continued demoralization of one-tenth of our population.

Now, if it so that Harlem exists principally for the benefit of people who like money, then it is also possible that one can begin to organize in the ghettos of this nation a massive civil disobedience campaign. And let me spell out a little bit — I want to be as precise as I can of what I mean by that. I was born in Harlem. I was raised in Harlem. And indeed, as long as I live, I will never be able really to leave Harlem. As they say, you can take the child out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the child. I know, therefore, what rents one pays for what. I know what you pay for meat, cabbage, clothes, life insurance, theft insurance, fire insurance. And all of this money feeds, ladies and gentlemen, helps to feed the oppressor, who uses the money to keep you in jail.

Now, isn’t it worth considering what one might be able to do if, instead of meekly submitting to this species of rape, one decided that instead of paying the rent, one refused to pay the rent, and when it is said that it is illegal to pay the rent, the answer is it is immoral to charge rent for the houses in which we live? I think that this, for example, among other things, begins to force the economic structure to deal with the problem which will destroy us if we do not deal with it, because no matter what I may feel, for example, about nonviolence, or no matter how I may feel about how people should treat each other, and no matter how I try to live my life, I am also aware, and I must be aware, that most people are not really interested, or do not dare perhaps — in any case, do not — act toward others as they would like to have others act toward them.

And therefore, there is something ultimately futile and terribly dangerous with having so many Negro boys and girls and men and women in the streets so long. I know that this peculiar country has admired the doctrine of nonviolence for six or eight or nine years and has applauded all those children and all those ministers and all those men and women who went to jail, who got beaten with chains and with hoses, and who were attacked by dogs, has admired them and has done nothing whatever to help them — and furthermore, not only that, which would be bad enough, intends to keep on admiring them and sending them to jail and doing nothing whatever to help them.

Now, I think it is time to blow the whistle. I think it is time to begin to deal with the power structure. We’re not dealing with white people. It’s not a matter of what white people think about you or what — even what they think about themselves. What one has to do is examine and overhaul the system, the system which creates this and perpetuates it.

It is a very important parenthesis, I think, that I probably ought to make. One’s got to point out, I think, that in this country, since the McCarthy era — and this is one of the reasons for our absolutely spectacular impotence — anyone who mentioned the word “economics” was promptly given a ticket to Moscow. I think it is beneath me to say that I am not a communist. I think it’s beneath the nation, and very dangerous for the nation, to raise this peculiar red herring the moment one begins to deal with things as they are.

Now, the nation which admires the doctrine of nonviolence has never, in my experience, and never, as far as I know, in its history, which began, if you remember, in Europe, admired nonviolence before. One of the myths of the English is they would never be slaves. One of the reasons Gary Cooper was such — and Humphrey Bogart were such powerful movie stars is they always had a gun. It’s only when a Black man says that he might go out and find himself a gun that the country becomes Christian for the first and only time.

Now, speaking for myself and trying as best I can to discharge what I take to be my responsibility to everyone in the streets, including me, I don’t want to see any more blood, nobody’s blood. My god! You know, if we could end the nightmare tomorrow morning at 9:00, I could die, you know, in peace. But, in fact, the nightmare will not be ending tomorrow morning at 9:00. And the nation, which has admired these boys and girls and men and women, overlooks the fact that a boy who was, let us say, 17 in 1955 has now spent eight years in the streets, is probably under a doctor’s care for being beaten half to death by the power structure, ladies and gentlemen, not simply by some idle policeman. Policemen know who they’re working for. And if by this time the boy and his wife and his children are very nearly at the end of their rope and are about to crack, this is why it is so important now to try to be precise about what it is that we must do.

It is impossible, all my liberal friends and critics, to the contrary — it is absolutely impossible for any Negro in this country to be fitted into the structure as it now exists. That is not a possibility. One must be willing to take upon oneself the responsibility of examining and changing the structure so that it becomes more human for everybody.

What the Negro’s friends pretend — and I’m sorry, baby, but with friends like that, you don’t need no enemies, you know? What the Negro’s friends pretend is that all the Negro wants is just another Cadillac. He wants to get to be just like Eisenhower. Well, I, speaking for myself, would rather cut my throat than suppose that my forefathers bled and suffered and died in this country in order to become yet another blank mediocrity.

What we can do — and again, if you remember what I tried to say about economics, when I was talking about the lining of the track and what would have happened if we hadn’t lined the track — if you think about the myths that American white people have created about American Black people, you begin to have some notion of the weight Black people have in white people’s consciences. It was never true, for example, that I came here wanting to rape nobody, you know. And, in fact, I very rarely carried a knife. And I know how to hold my liquor. But the myths to which one is subjected are the most terrifying symptom of the emotional and spiritual and sexual poverty and the panic of the American people.

AMY GOODMAN: Author, activist, poet, writer James Baldwin, speaking in 1963 in New York right after the Birmingham bombing, the bombing of a Birmingham church in which four African American girls were killed.

Democracy Now! is produced by Dan Coughlin. Errol Maitland is our New York engineer. Andy York is our Washington engineer. Julie Drizin is our executive producer. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for listening to another edition of Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!