is a key
figure of the civil rights movement in America. Though he identified with being a novelist early
on in his career, his essays on racial discrimination in the 1950s and 60s are what propelled
him into his significant place in literature. His most important contributions were his essay
collections (1955), Nobody Knows my Name (1961), and
(1963). These were historically pivotal, as they came out during the most
intense demonstrations of the civil rights movement. He gave voice to many black people,
particularly those living in the South, who were constantly living in fear of deeply entrenched
racial violence across America, especially with civil rights workers falling victim to
brutality, some of which even led to their deaths.
His voice is among the
many who sought to break the silence surrounding such grave injustices. He wrote in a preface to
his play, "" (1964):
What is ghastly and really
almost hopeless in our racial situation now is that the crimes we have committed are so great
and so unspeakable that the acceptance of this knowledge would lead, literally, to madness. The
human being, then, in order to protect himself, closes his eyes, compulsively repeats his
crimes, and enters a spiritual darkness which no one can describe.
What James Baldwin means by this is that actively choosing to remain silent and not
participating in stopping the social atrocities that run rampant are the very things that will
plunge the nation into a "spiritual darkness"a time so devoid of morality with the way
humans maltreat their fellow humans based solely on the color of their skin, and the perceived
superiority of those who enact such violence. When people remain complicit with violence and
discrimination, abuse becomes normalized.
It then becomes part and parcel of
daily life, subjecting black communities to irreversible social subjugation until their rights
are so diminished that they are no longer recognized. The power, then, lies in resisting these
forces and systems that perpetuate these injustices by speaking up, pushing back, participating
in demonstrations, and harnessing the power of literature in giving voice to the experiences and
stories of the oppressed. Baldwin warns in Notes of a Native Son
that
[p]eople who shut their eyes to reality
simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence
long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.
Without a doubt, breaking the silence is the most crucial step to fighting inequality.
Not only does it make people come together and lend them the power to fight for people's rights
during the most intense power struggles, it exists to resonate far beyond its time, in order to
serve the next generations towards building a better nation.
Henry Gates, a
professor of English and Afro-American Literature at Cornell Universoty spoke of James
Baldwin:
[He] educated an entire generation of Americans
about the civil-rights struggle and the sensibility of Afro-Americans as we faced and conquered
the final barriers in our long quest for civil rights.
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