Take This Hammer: James Baldwin in San Francisco (1963)

from Brendan Nee:

KQED's mobile film unit follows author and activist James Baldwin in the spring of 1963, as he's driven around San Francisco to meet with members of the local African-American community. He is escorted by Youth For Service's Executive Director Orville Luster and intent on discovering: "The real situation of Negroes in the city, as opposed to the image San Francisco would like to present." He declares: "There is no moral distance ... between the facts of life in San Francisco and the facts of life in Birmingham. Someone's got to tell it like it is. And that's where it's at."

Includes frank exchanges with local people on the street, meetings with community leaders and extended point-of-view sequences shot from a moving vehicle, featuring the Bayview and Western Addition neighborhoods. Baldwin reflects on the racial inequality that African-Americans are forced to confront and at one point tries to lift the morale of a young man by expressing his conviction that: "There will be a Negro president of this country but it will not be the country that we are sitting in now." The TV Archive would like to thank Darryl Cox for championing the merits of this film and for his determination that it be preserved and remastered for posterity.

What Would Jimmy Say?

What would have been his 86th birthday is a cause for reflection.

What might James Baldwin say?
by Felicia Pride

This week, writer, critic, activist, and literary icon James Baldwin would have celebrated his 86th birthday, a cause for reflection and tributes by those touched by his life and work.



And what work it was.

The Cross of Redemption (August 24, 2010, Pantheon Books), a forthcoming volume of Baldwin’s uncollected writings serves as another testament to the breadth of analysis and observation that he possessed and articulated with such clarity and power. Edited by writer Randall Kenan, the collection includes a mix of Baldwin’s essays, reviews, and public letters written between 1947 and 1985. In the book’s introduction, Kenan rightfully classifies Baldwin as a literary prodigy, one who successfully (both commercially and critically) used his talent to document, with unapologetic fervor, the twisted, complex, and often ugly world around him. His overarching theme, even as he also sought to assert, contextualize, unravel, and complicate his identities as gay, black, American, man, was simply, as Kenan notes, humanity.



Now as we forcefully stand in the midst of a post-racial façade, under the leadership of a Black president in a country where racial progress is as fragile as it’s imaginary and basic civil rights continue to be threatened, much can be understood from Baldwin’s thoughts about America’s past and future. 



While his ideas may have evolved if he was still alive, many of his assertions and conclusions remain relevant, poignant, and easily applicable to many of our current affairs. 



Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21.com

Happy 86th Birthday James Baldwin

Happy 86th Birthday James Baldwin from Alexis Gumbs on Vimeo.

Love messages for the queer Black genius James Baldwin gathered at a Sunday School/Birthday Party in his honor in Durham, NC.

brought to you by the MobileHomeComing Project: Celebrating generations of queer Black genius.