A view of Central Park from 24 Central Park South, Robert Kennedy’s apartment building in New York where the meeting took place.
The Baldwin-Kennedy meeting (May 24th 1963) was when Robert Kennedy met James Baldwin to talk at length about race in America.
Dramatis Personae:
- Robert Kennedy – president’s brother, Attorney General. He brought:
- Burke Marshall – the government’s top civil rights person.
- Also: Ed Guthman, press aide.
- James Baldwin – writer. He brought:
- Lorraine Hansberry – playwright;
- Jerome Smith – called “Gandhi Two” for his commitment to nonviolence. CORE, Freedom Rider;
- Clarence B. Jones – Baldwin’s and Martin Luther King, Jr’s lawyer;
- Kenneth Clark – psychologist.
- Also:
- Lena Horne,
- Harry Belafonte,
- Edwin C. Berry (Urban League),
- June Shagaloff (NAACP),
- Rip Torn (white actor from Texas),
- Henry Morgenthau III (television producer),
- Robert P. Mills (Baldwin’s literary agent, editor of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine),
- David Baldwin (brother),
- Thais Aubrey (David’s friend),
- Edward False (Baldwin’s secretary),
- young SNCC activist.
Picture from the Birmingham protests, which ended just two weeks before this meeting
This was just after the Birmingham protests – fire hoses, dogs, Bull Connor, King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, all of that.
Kennedy said Negroes were listening to dangerous extremists, like Malcolm X, which could cause real trouble.
Jerome Smith: “You don’t have no idea what trouble is. Because I’m close to the moment where I’m ready to take up a gun. … When I pull the trigger kiss it goodbye.”
Baldwin, to underscore Smith’s pacifism, asked him if he would fight for America in Cuba.
Smith: “Never, Never, Never!”
Kennedy: (shocked) “How can you say that?!”
Clark was shocked that Kennedy was shocked.
Smith “just put it like it was. He communicated the plain, basic suffering of being a Negro. … You could not encompass his anger, his fury, with a set of statistics.” (in Horne’s words.)
Kennedy was getting redder and redder. He reminded Smith of the seriousness of military obligations.
Smith said that being in the same room with Kennedy made him want to throw up.
Kennedy turned away from him.
Hansberry: “Look, if you can’t understand what this young man is saying then we are without any hope at all because you and your brother are representatives of the best that a white America can offer, and if you are insensitive to this, then there’s no alternative except our going in the streets.”
Kennedy told them how hard it was for his Irish ancestors when they arrived in America a hundred years ago. He said maybe in 40 years there will be a black president.
Baldwin: “Your family has been here for three generations. My family has been here far longer than that. Why is your brother at the top while we are still so far away? That is the heart of the problem.”
Jones (or Smith) said the president should escort black students to the all-white University of Alabama: “That way it will be clear that whoever spits on that child will be spitting on the nation.”
Kennedy and Marshall laughed.
Kennedy: “It would be meaningless moral gesture.”
Hansberry: “We would like from you, a moral commitment.”
Marshall spoke of “special men” in the FBI who protected civil rights workers. This produced almost hysterical laughter.
Kennedy could not talk to them the way he could talk to Dr King. They stood up, orated, cursed, cried. They were emotional, hysterical, “possessed”.
After three hours it ended in exhaustion. Kennedy was not getting it.
– Abagond, 2013, 2018.
Update (June 10th 2018): I am reading Michael Eric Dyson’s book about the meeting, “What Truth Sounds Like” (2018). I will make corrections and updates as needed:
Baldwin’s lawyer and Dr King’s lawyer were the same person, Clarence Jones. Baldwin’s secretary was Edward False. Ed Guthman was a press aide.
Sources:
This account is pieced together from what Kennedy, Baldwin, Hansberry, Kenneth Clark and Lena Horne later said. They disagree somewhat on the order of events and who said what. Main sources:
- YouTube: James Baldwin Interview with Kenneth Clark (1963) – Baldwin, Clark and Morgenthau left the meeting and recorded this interview. Baldwin and Clark refer to the meeting several times. Some of what Baldwin says echoes what Hansberry and Smith said.
- Village Voice (1963)
- Arthur M. Schlesinger, “Robert Kennedy and His Times” (1978)
- James Baldwin, “The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings” (2010) – in which he recalls the meeting in “Lorraine Hansberry at the Summit”, a piece he wrote in 1979.
- Taylor Branch, “Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63” (1998)
- Susan Sinnot, “Lorraine Hansberry: Award-Winning Playwright and Civil Rights Activist” (1999)
- Herb Boyd, “Baldwin’s Harlem: A Biography of James Baldwin” (2008)
- Wikipedia (2013)
- Updates in 2018 from “What Truth Sounds Like” (2018) by Michael Eric Dyson.
See also:
- Other accounts of the meeting:
- 1963 – the 100th year after the Emancipation Proclamation:
- April-May: Birmingham protests
- April: Martin Luther King, Jr: Letter from Birmingham Jail
- May: this meeting
- June: assassination of Medgar Evers
- July:
- August: March on Washington, 1963
- September: The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing
- October:
- November: Malcolm X: Message to the Grassroots
- November: assassination of President John Kennedy
- Not at the meeting
- white privilege mindset
- Joshua Solomon – finds out what it is like to lose white privilege
- Sheltered White Men
- The bootstrap myth
- darkies – black people are happy! Except when they are not, in which case they are oversensitive ingrates! Heads I win, tails you lose!
- ENT: Emotional Negro Thinking
- You cannot “prove” racism to most White Americans
- How to talk to white people about racism
Abagond 
Thanks for this very insightful. Dang, Kennedy was just obtuse, was he being just willfully ignorant about the racial dynamic in America? Yet in every black household in America, there are those pictures with Jesus and the picture of MLK and JFK and RFK, and they really didn’t care about us at all. Somebody had to get in their face and tell them how messed up things were. I really was just totally ignorant about the Kennedys and their concern about Black America.
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Little known fact: Ted Kennedy burst in drunk and pantsless and asked if Lena Horne would sleep with him if he spent the rest of his political career catering to black voters.
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I like how tough Lorrainne Hansberry was not backing down. She kept it real with him.
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[…] The Baldwin-Kennedy meeting (May 24th 1963) was when Robert Kennedy met James Baldwin to talk at length about race in America. Dramatis Personae: Robert Kennedy – president's brother, Attorney Gene… […]
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Abagond, thanks for posting such an enlightening post. Sadly, this meeting between Baldwin and Kennedy contrasts the difference between blacks of today and the 60s and 70s. Blacks of the civil rights era who had some clout and notoriety spoke for those who had none. They were sincere in their efforts to tear down the walls of discrimination even if it meant forfeituring the balance of their own life.
On the other hand, blacks who are in powerful political positions and otherwise today are silent. It appears that they are silent due to fear. They are afraid to rock the boat and every one else merely wants to get their swag on and bling-bling stockpiled.
The contrast is quite revealing. It also exposes the socioeconomic and kinship split within the black race as well. 😦
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@ Mary Burrell, it is always harder for a younger generation to see why an older generation might have stood behind someone we can so obviously see his faults. When the faults seem as bad as this, but I guess having Kennedy come when he so obviously didn’t need to is one. The Kennedy’s weren’t grooming John or Rob to be the next president that honor would have gone to the older brother Joe who died in at war. It was thought by the family that you couldn’t get your rights unless you showed patriotism through military participation. The so called zenith of your show of commitment to the country.
The Kennedy’s weren’t the messiah but they were a good tool to use to widen the berth. Would things have turn out better for blacks with another person at the helm? I do not know, it is hard to see it so.
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wow did not know this. interesting. it’s always funny how people always bring out the i’m irish or italian thing to try to make themselves look oppressed and cast away their privileges for a short time. but lol at him being shocked that a black man didn’t want to fight for a country that didn’t treat him right.
“the president should escort black students to the all-white University of Alabama: “That way it will be clear that whoever spits on that child will be spitting on the nation.”
Kennedy and Marshall laughed.
Kennedy: “It would be meaningless moral gesture.”
rofl, see robert u answered ur own question about how can u say that and why would u not want to fight for ur country. why, when u think its funny and don’t take their children’s future serious? . u want the black person to fight for the country’s freedom but yet u are not willing to fight for equality for their children? u wanted black ppl to fight for freedom abroad when they had their own fight for equality in america to contend with. u wanted them to fight for a country’s freedom when they couldn’t fully enjoy the freedom they were promised. wow, just wow, selfish much?
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I always had that intuitive feeling that told me most, if not all U.S. presidents have been indifferent to black struggles. It’s quite funny how Marshall mentioned the FBI catering to blacks, when in fact they had the whole Hoover/COINTELPRO operations going on..
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@anonapoc
Maybe I’m convinced that the feds “catered” to blacks just enough so that they wouldn’t lose complete faith in America and therefore turn militant as a whole or, heaven forbid, “Communist.”
It was all about lowering the temperature on a boiling pot to a steady simmer…
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Yeah; Kennedy wasn’t as much for PoC rights as might be thought……if I remember correctly right after he was assassinated the guy who took his place, Lyndon B. Johnson.
Started okaying civil rights initiatives that Kennedy and Co. had simply been sitting on.
Kennedy gets a lot of slack for being young, good looking, good with speeches and dying in office.
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Great post!
And more proof that when you scratch a white liberal, you’ll find a refined racist who has no intention of eliminating the system of white domination/black subjugation
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Love it. Harry Belafonte also offers a rendering of this moment in My Song: A Memoir. EMM
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The biggest problem; a lot of people can’t see past their own problems.
In one of my college classes about National American Government…..it got talked about various social programs etc…..and while people could see their own issues, women could see that sexism still existed etc…..they couldn’t see that racism still existed.
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V-4 writes
“…women could see that sexism still existed etc…..they couldn’t see that racism still existed.”
_ _ _
Hmm. In using the word “women” in the context above, are you referring to white women or just women in general?
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@ Mack Lyons I agree. In that pot you could include Puerto Ricans, Mexican-Americans, asians, homosexuals, women, etc.. But I think the ingredient that they feared the most was blacks. My question is whether the government feared all the above mentioned joining the Communist ranks? Or was it easier for the FBI to dismantle these groups if they were separated? Like using a divide and conquer approach…
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* Or was it harder
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@Pay it Forward
Good point; a non-white women in there was a woman of Jewish descent. Even then she was “pretty much” white, had the features and her hair was wavy but her skin was pretty pale.
Which; factoring her into it makes it slightly worse…..she could see sexism and one of the things she mentioned was how people made jokes to her about Nazi’s etc….way more than you would think they would even though she wasn’t comfortable with them and they knew it.
But racism slipped right past her, anti-antisemitism, sexism both things she could see….racism not so much.
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“Kennedy was not getting it.”
********
Typical … and why I won’t talk to whites – offline – about race. It’s too draining.
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Great post Abagond!
This Baldwin –Kennedy meeting highlights the ever present perspective of whites towards the plight blacks in Amerikkka: We are an invisible people. This is quite evident in the responses and laughter from Kennedy and others representing the government. They do not understand, hear or see the true conditions of the black man. It’s mainly due to ingrained racism and partly because they’re incapable of channeling our empathy and partly due to an abundance of indifference.
This meeting also contrasts the difference between blacks with clout and notoriety of the 60s and 70s and blacks of today’s bourgeois. During the civil rights era, famous blacks spoke from their hearts of the problems in this country. This included actors, tell-lie-vision personalities and athletes, etc.
On the other hand, most blacks today in the upper financial echelon would much rather get their swag-on and further stockpiling of their bling-bling than think about the socioeconomic conditions of the average black person. They’ve personally placed themselves on mute regarding incidents of racism in this kountry.
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Bravo Abagond; this post blows me away. I always thought the Kennedy’s were different. I’m a little disappointed, but not surprised, to be honest. I think Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe were the only high profile Whites (that I know of) who were both known for believing in civil rights for the Black community and were actually really genuine in their support, and stood by it, even if they were criticized for it at the time.
I remember watching a Malcolm X interview a while back, and he was discussing the fact that he felt it was absolutely imperative that the African American community learn to be completely independent of White liberals in their fight for progression, as there was always betrayal at the last minute when it mattered most. This is the perfect example of what he was talking about.
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From reading the discussion of their meeting Kennedy is pretty indifferent to the plight of blacks in America. We have always been invisible in this country.
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Abagond, you’ve done it again. What an amazing, insightful post. Done largely without comment — just a presentation of the facts. Bravo. This needs to be dramatized for stage or film, although I think most people would believe it was embellished or altogether fictional. It just goes to show, the more things change, the more they remain the same. It also illustrates why we need to quit sucking on the teat of white acceptance, acknowledgement, respect, or what have you. It’s never going to happen. It’s futile to continue to focus our efforts on swaying them, when what we should be doing is swaying ourselves: toward our own growth and development, and ultimately toward independence of and from them as much as possible.
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^^^
*the Kennedys
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Ah, so the Kennedys werent thebastions of fairness that whites claim.
“JFK got King out of jail!!”
” And?”
He even played the “im irish” card. You know, when pales try to compare FOUR CENTURIES of hell to whatever bullshit they claim the Irish went through. As if Ireland had resources to loot. Europe has no resources and all pales know it. Hence their murder and rape of EVERYWHERE ELSE that does. Put them back in the caves. The sun doesn’t even like them.
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Matari,
i concur ….too draining.
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@ Noneya: Comment deleted for being off topic.
https://abagond.wordpress.com/comment-policy/
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What’s this? The Kennedys, the stock that released MLK f3om prison, were not the bastions of civil rights that liars would have us believe?
The more you look into it, the more you realize that there are no good white people to be found in history or current events.
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@ Grin
Yes!
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@ Kiwi
Yup. I have seen that too.
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Clark said that at the meeting Kennedy was not getting it. On the other hand, he did not minimize or condescend. In time at least some of it would sink in. For example, Kennedy would later say:
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@Legion
I was going to say Sinatra, as he believed in civil rights for African Americans (all poc) and so openly that he was investigated by J Edgar Hoover throughout his entire career, as this was viewed as a sign of him being a communist threat to America. BUT, one of the biggest trademarks of Sinatra’s standup comedy (with “The rat pack”), was his racists jokes at the expense of Sammy Davis Jr, which actually hurt and humiliated Sammy, but there was nothing he could do about it, so he just laughed along. It was for this reason that I did not include him.
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@Abagond
I wonder if president Kennedy’s views differed at all from that of his brother’s and this time?
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. . . I know, I know, “wishful thinking.”
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In Elaine Brown’s book “A Taste of Power,” she talks about how Sinatra was a contributor and supporter of the Black Panthers.
Supposedly, Charlton Heston was on the front lines of many Civil Rights era functions.
But, after all was said and done, these two still had their white constituencies to placate, so…
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@V-4: Yeah, man, LBJ! He’s a Texan!
But this excerpt, if accurate, really does a great job of illustrating the communication, moral, political, and personal dynamics that make the negotiation so difficult. You want to know what’s going on, you’ve got to listen to everybody in that conversation. Glad you posted this.
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@ milesaway44105
Thanks! I thought maybe he said something about it.
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@ Ebonymonroe
Good question. At the time of the meeting I doubt it.
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John Kennedy: White Southerners were part of John Kennedy’s power base. In Alabama the police and the FBI were in bed with the Klan. Kennedy did not enforce Supreme Court decisions if it meant moving against Southern governors. His hand had to be forced at each turn by protests and the threat or fact of civil unrest. He did not start seriously pushing the Civil Rights Bills till violent protests had already spread across the country.
Robert Kennedy, his brother, was extremely loyal. His main concern at this point was law and order, not justice or civil rights. Civil rights were, at best, a technocratic tool – a way to buy off protest to calm things down.
Despite the Birmingham protest, Robert Kennedy still thought that blacks were pretty much content. You see that in how he talks about Malcolm X. He sees him as a dangerous troublemaker, not as someone giving voice to a hundred years of black discontent.
Robert Kennedy thinks he can get by with putting out fires like Birmingham as they arise. No deep reform necessary! He thought he was going to come out of this meeting as an honorary black person! He did not expect to get chewed out. Apparently he was used to blacks talking to him in a guarded, deferential way.
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/the-good-darkie-fallacy/
He did not think racism was a big deal. You see that in his Irish American comment. Like a true white liberal, he thinks it is a class thing. Blacks are just brown-skinned ethnic immigrants. Bootstraps all the way!
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Look at an electoral map from 1960 some time. Kennedy had to fight like hell to do as well in the South as he did; had he run or governed the way this group wanted, the 1960s would have been ten times more violent than they already were. Not to mention the political difficulties Kennedy created with his mere presence; he hadn’t even unpacked in the White House when he was messing with the Rules Committee–he expanded it, making the Southern Democrats who were dumb enough to vote for a sleazy Irish Yankee realize they were about to get a bunch of big spending bills rammed down their throats. From the moment he arrived, he was doomed, politically.
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Thank you for taking the time to do a post on this. I was unaware of the meeting and had thought (as per blacks I know) that Kennedy was a good man and for the black people. Though it is quite interesting how we at times blind ourselves with the little good things that one does and remain blind to the bad things they have done. Has any other president made any type of efforts to sit down with black leaders to discuss issues of the black community or was this one and last of it’s kind?
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I have never been a worshipper of the Kennedy clan. My family had no photos of any of them gracing our walls.
HOWEVER… I am actually willing to cut Bobby a little slack here:
1) The first time you hear something (especially if it’s negative and pointing to your own moral weaknesses) you are not likely to endorse it. But the real test comes in the days, months, and years later… Does it sink in? Does it EVENTUALLY begin make more sense, and affect one’s worldview?
So, I’m not going to judge a man based completely on the fact that he didn’t immediately buy into what was, by all estimates, a fairly radical point of view at the time, the very first time that he heard it.
2) A man can’t help but to be the product of his environment. RFK was born rich, powerful, and incredibly privileged. You cannot fairly expect that he could see the world in the same way that people who were poor, oppressed and disenfranchised would see it. He simply didn’t have the personal context or experience to immediatly understand this point of view on the spot as it spilled out of people’s mouths.
Even the privileged are victims of an unfair class system, albeit in a different way then are the disadvantaged.
3) The common thinking of the time matters when judging the thinking of individuals at the time—There were even many Black people of the era, who would not have agreed with what Baldwin, Hansberry, Smith, Jones and Clark were saying. Certainly most Whites would have not. I don’t expect Bobby Kennedy to come at this with a 2013 perspective of race and justice. These truths evolved as they have been examined over decades. Things that seem abundantly clear to you and I would have been less clear to people (of all races) in 1963.
I’m not saying that Baldwin, Hansberry, Smith, Jones and Clark weren’t right. I’m just saying that they seem a lot more right in 2013 than they possible could have in 1963. All of these have to taken into consideration by an honest person before making snap judgements.
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How did I miss this post?!
It makes for fascinating reading. I know Jimmy Baldwin “rapped on race” (and lots of other subjects) with many movers and shakers of the time, but I never heard about this one. Definitely food for thought.
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My first thoughts are that last year Ireland celebrated its 50th anniversary of JFK’s visit to that country, and all the recalled pride in his becoming the USA’s first Irish-Catholic president.
The of PoV was that this was a “racial” achievement in itself! It had seemed like an impossibility for generations of Irish-Catholics before him. The common notion was that being Irish, they knew about suffering, both in Ireland and in the US. This was a moral “credential” that absolved men like them from any sin of white supremacy, or white privilege.
When Mr Obama (O’Bama) visited Ireland in 2011, it was not his blackness, or African-American-ness that was of interest.
His Irishness was what counted.
I’d never seen the American President exhibiting this before — only in Ireland.
They see him here as one of the Irish-American presidents.
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@King
It’s been a while since I have been moved to tears by an internet blog post. This post, the pain it records, the passion of oppression and the tragic dimension of Anglo ignorance and of Anglos’ often failed struggle to dimly perceive the truth, all moved me to tears. What also made me cry is my own lived knowledge of how Bobby in some ways, just like Malcolm, came to embody the violent expiation of America’s guilt–paid for in the currency of his own flesh and blood.
You are wrong to cut Bobby any slack whatsoever. You are correct that it can sink in eventually–as it did with Bobby, because he himself wrote and spoke in the last years of his life, about his OWN insensitivity, blindness, and guilt with regard to the question of racial injustice in America. But let us not forget that Bobby was born into an oppressed nationality that had suffered vicious suppression and violence at the hands of the British for hundreds of years. That reality is in no way eliminated by wealth.
Despite his father’s wealth, Joe Kennedy had himself experienced rejection, racism, and was barred from the inner societies of American White Power, which was exactly what drove him to maniacally found a family of children he arduously drove through harsh discipline and command, and thrust forward into Anglo society and influence, where HE HIMSELF could not follow despite all his wealth. Bobby knew this. As a child he was ironically, constantly rebuked by his father, for his and his brothers’ becoming exactly what their father had driven them to become: ‘white’. Joe detested his ivy league sons’ lax attitude toward their own identity. Bobby knew how conflicted and how contradictory his father had been–double consciousness is what that’s called.
So, Bobby was being deliberately obdurate and defensive of his own childhood fantasy of existing ‘apart’ from the issues he had known as a child at his own dinner table in Hyannis Port, and that he frankly had seen plenty of as Attorney General. I don’t believe it is beyond the pale to speculate that Bobby’s entire adult life up to his brother’s public murder was nothing more or less than a typical White ethnic ploy to sheath himself in a pretense of ‘whiteness’ despite his own ethnic-European identity as a ‘low’ ethnic minority (the Irish); to guard his ego against the overt ‘colored’ experience of his father’s life. Bobby was a bulldog of a bully-boy for the family and for his brother, single mindedly veering far, far right of even John Kennedy; for, don’t forget, Robert had worked as a special legal council to Joe McCarthy’s HUAC mess (House Un-American Activities Committee). He was being the hard ass, the selfish narcissist that he remained until his brother’s assassination. That was what it took for him to wake up, and to begin a dark journey of the soul away from the mindset of privilege and toward American consciousness. The violent blood offering of his brother’s flesh on a national, public alter in Dallas forced Bobby to come home, and he came home–to US, to BLACK people. Baldwin lived to see that.
But notice I call him “Bobby”? African Americans my age and older feel that Bobby is ours, because as historian, Douglas Field writes of Bobby in the introduction to Field’s book, “A Historical Guide to James Baldwin”:
In truth, Robert Kennedy underwent one of the most dramatic public transformations in US political history. He had begun his journey as a reportedly haughty and arrogant millionaire’s son, working for Senator Joe McCarthy…
In the months and years following the public execution of his brother, Bobby indeed underwent a very public, almost Promethean passion, suffering through self recrimination and public expiation in a modeling (a model very few Anglo politicians other than Governor George Wallace and Senator Robert Bird have had the courage to duplicate) of how every Anglo American politician can extricate himself from the madness of race and privilege and take up the mantel of American identity and commitment to the struggle for justice.
Bobby fused himself to the hearts and souls of a generation of African Americans with his courageous speech before a Black crowd on the night Martin King was assassinated; in his work as a senator from New York to expose the fact that the face of poverty in America was not just Black but was national and multi-ethnic; with his senatorial support of a program to rebuild and to renovate Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy district and his unfulfilled plan to spread similar renovations across urban America and to do it in such a way that the original inhan=bitants of renovated neighborhoods would be able to afford to live in the new housing; with his public embrace of the radical politics of the American Indian Movement and of Caesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, rejecting the Cointelpro activities of the FBI,\; and finally with his heartfelt embrace of the Black electorate when he ran for president, by wading unprotected into the arms of crowds of Black people in the cities, who embraced him back, lovingly. His campaign team had a host of Black advisers, and a Black security team, pictures of which had been un-examined for decades until ESQUIRE Magazine returned them to public scrutiny.
The final evidence of his redemption, at least in our eyes, is the phenomenal funeral cortege that traveled across the nation by rail–a train carrying Bobby’s assassinated body, a cortege that featured thousands of Blacks along the route in public mourning, unprecedented since the death and funeral cortege of Abraham Lincoln. That’s why we call him “Bobby”. He began as theirs, by birth. But he ended as ours, by martyrdom.
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@ Rayfield A Waller
I recall a British documentary about the transformation of Bobby Kennedy’s image. The MLK speech was certainly pivotal, especially the moment when he says “my brother was also killed by a white man” and then quotes from Aeschylus :
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoKzCff8Zbs)
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@ Rayfield A. Waller
Wonderful comment! Thank you. I am glad that my post was able to get across something of what the meeting was like.
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@Rayfield A. Waller
Your comment left me in a moment of silence . . .. thought provoking, moving, and, impeccable.
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[…] The Baldwin-Kennedy meeting […]
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This meeting was presented in the film I Am Not Your Negro. Baldwin mentions Lorraine Hansberry was 32 at the time of this meeting and he says when she walked out the room she said ” Have a good day Mr. Attorney General ” this to RFK I guess she knew Kennedy wouldn’t help them and their meeting had fallen on RFK’s deaf ears. Baldwin says that was the last time he would see Lorraine Hansberry and how much he missed her. In the narration Baldwin says the next year he reads the newspaper and Lorraine Hansberry is dead at the age of 33 years old. It didn’t occur to me how young MLK and Malcolm X and Medgar Evers were they all were under the age of 40 when they died.
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Michael Eric Dyson wrote a book about this very meeting, “What Truth Sounds Like: RFK, James Baldwin, and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America”. It comes out on June 5th.
Amazon says it is their “#1 New Release in LGBT Political Issues”.
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Has anyone read this book yet?
I just read this article about an interview with the author.
What a 1963 RFK-James Baldwin meeting teaches us about race in Trump’s America
“We’ve been living without truth for a long time.” —Michael Eric Dyson
https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/6/8/17417758/trump-race-america-rfk-james-baldwin-michael-eric-dyson
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@ jefe
I am getting it out of the library later today (I had put myself on the waiting list. For “Barracoon” I am #35). I will let you know what I think. If I read it all the way through, I will do a post on it.
And, if the book has enough fresh information, I might do another post on the meeting itself. Hopefully Dyson has done way more research on the meeting than I have! I will be pretty upset if it turns out to be just a book-length Slate article.
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^^^^ Some of those who took part in the meeting are still alive and probably have vivid memories of it.
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Update: I am reading Michael Eric Dyson’s book about the meeting, “What Truth Sounds Like” (2018). I will make corrections and updates as needed:
Baldwin’s lawyer and Dr King’s lawyer were the same person, Clarence Jones. Baldwin’s secretary was Edward False. Ed Guthman was a press aide.
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Rayfield A Waller’s comment from 2014 was phenomenal! So lucid and detailed. What an inspiration.
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I said:
Yeah, it was pretty much a book-length Slate article:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2018/06/29/michael-eric-dyson-what-truth-sounds-like/
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