Some notes from Harry Belafonte’s account of the meeting between James Baldwin and Robert Kennedy in New York on May 24th 1963. He was there and wrote about it in his autobiography, “My Song” (2011). Baldwin had invited him, though Belafonte was more Kennedy’s friend. See the overview post for this meeting to know more about the setting and cast of characters.
After hors d’oeuvres and a light buffet, Robert Kennedy thanked them for coming. He listed what his brother, the president, was doing for civil rights. Then:
Robert Kennedy: “We have a party in revolt and we have to be somewhat considerate about how to keep them on board if the Democratic party is going to prevail in the next elections.” He said blacks need to understand that. Listening to Malcolm X would only bring trouble.
Kennedy talked about black and white Americans fighting together in Vietnam (still two years away).
Jerome Smith of CORE (agitated): “I don’t know what I’m doing here, listening to all this cocktail-party patter. What you’re asking us young black people to do is pick up guns against people in Asia while you have continued to deny us our rights here.”
Smith, a Freedom Rider, had been subjected to savage beatings. He, like many others, was about fed up with non-violence:
Smith: “When I pull the trigger, kiss it good-bye.”
Kennedy was stunned. He thought all Americans would do their patriotic duty when faced with a common enemy.
James Baldwin asked Smith if he would pick up a gun if America declared war.
Smith (to Kennedy): “Never! These are poor people who did nothing to us. They’re more my brothers than you are.”
Kennedy: “You will not fight for your country? How can you say that?”
They went back and forth. Then Smith said that being in the same room with Kennedy made him want to throw up.
Lorraine Hansberry (standing up): “You’ve got a great many very, very accomplished people in this room, Mr. Attorney General. But the only man who should be listened to is that man over there.” She pointed to Smith.
Kennedy turned red. Belafonte had never seen him so shaken.
Then came the flood: others spoke like it was their one chance to tell Kennedy what they truly thought.
Kennedy listened to another few minutes of this and then ended the meeting.
As the meeting broke up, Belafonte approached Kennedy.
Kennedy (angry): “You know us better than that. Why don’t you tell these people who we are?”
Belafonte: “Why do you assume I don’t? Maybe if we were not there telling them who you are, things would not be as calm as they are.”
Kennedy: “Calm? With what’s going on in the streets?”
Belafonte: “Yes. You may think you’re doing enough, but you don’t live with us, you don’t even visit our pain. Obviously, progress in America is in the eyes of the beholder. What you observe, Bobby, and what you want to see of us, is based upon the needs of the political machine. What we need is well beyond that. The problem is the failure of the power players to see us for who we really are and what we are really experiencing. Those children in Birmingham are our children, not yours -”
Kennedy (turns to Burke Marshall, his head of civil rights): “Enough.”
Then Kennedy turned and walked away.
Source: “My Song” (2011) by Harry Belafonte.
See also:
Truth hurts.
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This is basically like every conversation with white people about racism. The close their ears after a certain point, and then they just retreat. Or any conversation with men about sexism. Or any conversation about class with privileged people.
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wow, this is deep…I want to read more…more…more! @ > : o O ) >
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Just shows how dense RFK was regarding what was happening to black people in America.
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Kennedy: “You will not fight for your country? How can you say that?”
The only time we are of any use to them is when we are willing to take bullets for them.
God forbid we come back
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Speechless.
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Interesting that the meeting between Baldwin and Kennedy where she was present occurred on New York on May 24th 1963.
It was allegedly the same year (1963) that Lorraine Hansberry was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She died on January 12, 1965 at the age of 34.
She was under FBI surveillance at the time and later, an FBI reviewer of Raisin in the Sun highlighted its Pan-Africanist themes as “dangerous.”
When Sam Greenlee wrote the revolutionary novel, “The Spook Who Sat by the Door” he was hounded so mercilessly by the FBI that he left the U.S.
I saw a video of Robert Kennedy shaking hands with a crowd and saw something I will never forget that SPEAKS VOLUMES about the “white liberal” mentality that so many of us put so much hope and faith in.
As he passed by this one black male, instead of shaking his hand, Robert Kennedy reached out and rubbed the man’s HEAD, much as you might caress a dog’s head.
Scratch a white liberal and you will find someone who has absolutely no interest in giving up their white privileges OR with abolishing the system of white supremacy.
The day black people stop searching for white saviors and face the FACT that we will have to save ourselves, is the day we will begin to break the chains of 500 years of psychological oppression.
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I mentioned Lorraine Hansberry in my previous post because I always thought it was highly suspicious that she died of cancer so young after writing a play exposing racism along with her “dangerous” political activities.
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@ George Ryder
It’s the same “Great White Savior” that Clinton represented, when in reality, he passed more laws that hurt black people than his predecessor, Bush, Sr.
and Hillary Clinton, while a Senator for NY. did NOTHING for black people and the only time she spoke about them (to my knowledge) was when she was running against Obama
I remember many blacks feeling torn for supporting a black male over white massa’s wife. If she runs for president, some of us will support her as blindly as we (myself included) supported Clinton–who meant us NO good.
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It’s disappointing and disheartening to learn that the Kennedy’s were not the advocates of black people during that time as i and many others had been taught. Back then you couldn’t vist a black person’s home if upon their wall next to white Jesus and MLK was and JFK and RFK.
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Wisdom.
I have to wonder if it’s our deep-seated longing to be inducted into the collective that is mainstream white America as the Italian, Irish and Polish immigrants were, combined with an inlaid self-loathing of ourselves that’s causing us to look for that white savior to set everything straight and officially confirm our humanity to the rest of the collective so that they’ll leave us alone…
There’s no “great white savior” forthcoming, no matter how hard we search. The only solution I can see is looking inward and building a society within a society, one that allows us to consolidate our own socioeconomic power and end our reliance on power structures that would rather see us bound and broken or not seen at all.
As for Hillary Clinton, the last thing the Democrat party and the nation needs is a 1990s-era neo-liberal retread. But that’s what the party is likely to pick and that’s what will likely leave us with a Republican president for the next four to eight years.
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Lorraine Hansberry was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a month later. This meeting was the last time James Baldwin saw her standing.
The FBI had been watching her since 1952 when she went to a peace conference in place of Paul Robeson, who was not allowed to leave the country by that point. That was seven years before she became famous, before most people even knew who she was.
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Robert Kennedy changed greatly over the next five years and this meeting was the turning point. But at this time he did not even support the Civil Rights Act. He thought Blacks were more or less content, that piecemeal reforms would work. He saw Malcolm X as a troublemaker, not as someone giving voice to what millions of Blacks were already thinking.
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George Ryder “America is always looking for some white Jesus type to cleanse us of our racial sins.”
You have “racial sins”? Interesting.
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ms hansberry she died young very attractive i might add, need to look into that more, i remember reading raisin in the sun not her work, must look her up
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Right on cue. It wouldn’t be much of a conversation if we didn’t have our in-house crank on board.
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ah so sorry to say abagond catholic ideations not so much secular humanist thought have a nice 4 seconds or so
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Mack
Yep. When I’m not heckling 9/11 Truthers and alien abductees about having been anally probed I like to get a few laughs here.
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@dj can you please go away and come back once you have a clue and some friends please i am begging you yes i am white as well
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@ abagond
who said: “Lorraine Hansberry was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a month later. This meeting was the last time James Baldwin saw her standing.”
Makes you wonder…
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Bobby Kennedy was a prime example of a sheltered white man for a time. Maybe, just maybe, there would’ve been some racial progress under his administration had he not been assassinated, if he genuinely changed significantly about his views.
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I have to wonder if it’s our deep-seated longing to be inducted into the collective that is mainstream white America as the Italian, Irish and Polish immigrants were, combined with an inlaid self-loathing of ourselves that’s causing us to look for that white savior to set everything straight and officially confirm our humanity to the rest of the collective so that they’ll leave us alone…
Mack, I think there are some who do look for that white savior. But I also think there are those who continue to hope for white people to wake up, not necessarily save anyone but to finally understand what’s going on and not act “white”, so to speak.
There’s no “great white savior” forthcoming, no matter how hard we search. The only solution I can see is looking inward and building a society within a society, one that allows us to consolidate our own socioeconomic power and end our reliance on power structures that would rather see us bound and broken or not seen at all.
That’s the only solution I see that is logical. This society is going down the tubes due – in part – to its own pathology of racism. We don’t need to become its life-support for a nation that seems to want to commit suicide.
As for Hillary Clinton, the last thing the Democrat party and the nation needs is a 1990s-era neo-liberal retread. But that’s what the party is likely to pick and that’s what will likely leave us with a Republican president for the next four to eight years.
If that happens, we can kiss our already failing economy goodbye and farewell.
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@ Mack Lyons
Part of the problem is OUR identity, language, history, names, religion, culture, etc. was stolen from us and we became a non-people who were forced to adopt and adapt to whatever our oppressors wanted us to be:
the perfect slaves
That’s why — in my opinion– we look for validation everyone but each other because those groups you mentioned know where they came from. They have a homeland to return to and a language they can speak – if they choose — and they are treated as white people (even if the real white people know better). They have something we don’t have, something that was stolen from us and never returned.
On top of this, blackness is demonized in every way imaginable, which is very demoralizing for a people who were NEVER allowed to recover from 400 years of chattel slavery.
It’s a miracle that we are able to rise above this madness and make something of our lives.
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@ Mack Lyons
Don’t forget, she’s a WAR-MONGER, just another ravenous white wolf in sheep’s clothing
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Well I for one am glad da jokah takes the time to visit, because without him I wouldn’t be able to get in my laughs.
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Whatever our old identities were, it’s likely that we’ll never discover them, short of a miracle. Which is why it’s important that we develop an identity to embrace as our own – one that neither borrows from a poisonous mainstream culture nor one that allows the pathologies we’re currently plagued with to continue. We need a completely clean slate and a love for ourselves and one another that can strengthen and sustain us throughout this process and beyond.
Tribes and cultures aren’t set in stone and neither are languages. It can be done, but the main problem is likely to manifest itself not in the form of mainstream white Americans who can’t stand competing cultures, but from fellow black Americans who’re still intent on integrating into the mainstream.
Keep in mind it’s only the economy for the middle class and below that’s failing, and it’s failing by design. The wealthy 1%ers and even wealthier 0.1% are too enamoured by the relentless accumulation of seemingly endless wealth that they can’t see the golden goose drawing its last breath. It’s gonna get ugly before it gets better.
At that point, Kennedy, like most white American leaders, didn’t take black oppression seriously until he ran into a cold, hard fact:
The people you oppress most are the least willing to lay their lives down for your nation in the name of patriotism. Because these people have little or nothing to be patriotic about.
You’ll always have a few looking to prove themselves, but the rest won’t take up arms against a foreign people in a foreign land, only to be oppressed some more when they return home.
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I can better understand the obvious white bigot. I get it…really. Their bigotry is the signpost as to where we both stand. It’s the intellectually dishonest white liberal or progressive I cannot stand. And they are the ones who feel free to make policy for others while lying to themselves that they are moral ones above the other bigoted whites who are not on their cloud of moral and intellectual supremacy. And that cloud is also protected by white supremacy. That is the difference between the republican and democratic parties. Both are a sham which it comes to civil rights and blacks in particular. Republicans feel that civil rights are for whites. The Democratic party believes that blacks should settle for the bare minimum that white supremacy allows.
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“May 1961 – President Kennedy sends 400 American Green Beret ‘Special Advisors’ to South Vietnam to train South Vietnamese soldiers in methods of ‘counter-insurgency’ in the fight against Viet Cong guerrillas.”
source: http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index-1961.html
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bay of pigs and vietnam 1961
nelson mandela/cia 1962
jfk 1963
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Thanks for this Abagond.
Mack Lyons said “The people you oppress most are the least willing to lay their lives down for your nation in the name of patriotism. Because these people have little or nothing to be patriotic about.”
Maybe that’s why patriotism and saluting the flag is stressed so much in public schools. Why American history is selective and war always portrayed as right and just. “I regret that I have only one life to give for my country” Patrick Henry.
Jacque said. “And they are the ones who feel free to make policy for others while lying to themselves that they are moral ones above the other bigoted whites who are not on their cloud of moral and intellectual supremacy.”
Liberals claim to be ally’s but when it comes to where they wish to put their focus it’s always on “more pressing issues”.
The Republicans with their “tough on crime” and “war on drugs” verses the Democrats prison guard unions which over the last twenty years built the largest prison system in the world, you would think that non whites would have figured out by now that both parties don’t have their best interests in mind.
It’s interesting how when the war in Vietnam was winding down, that a new war was created to take it’s place. And this one was aimed at non whites at home.
“Richard Nixon became president in 1969, and did not back away from the anti-drug precedent set by Johnson. Nixon began orchestrating drug raids nationwide to improve his “watchdog” reputation. Lois B. Defleur, a social historian who studied drug arrests during this period in Chicago, stated that, “police administrators indicated they were making the kind of arrests the public wanted”. Additionally, some of Nixon’s newly created drug enforcement agencies would resort to illegal practices to make arrests as they tried to meet public demand for arrest numbers. From 1972 to 1973, the Office of Drug Abuse and Law Enforcement performed 6,000 drug arrests in 18 months, the majority of the arrested black. [64]” Wikipedia
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What? You mean Kennedy didn’t bring up the crap about him being Irish? He didn’t even lie and play the “Jewish” card?
Nor did he claim he was “part Native”? What was he thinking? Someone shoulda told him to go back to Closet Racism 101.
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@ Average Bee
According to James Baldwin and Lena Horne he did bring up the Irish thing.
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@ Aba
And it failed. Even back then. So why do whites think it will work now? Why does any Black person give those tactics any credit?
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https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/25/entertainment/harry-belafonte-death/index.html
R.I.P. Harry Belafonte, yours was a voice of conscience, and is gone.
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