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The 1963 James Baldwin and Martin Luther King, Jr. Warnings to America Carly Lucas University of Chicago [email protected]

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The 1963 James Baldwin and Martin Luther King, Jr. Warnings to America Carly Lucas University of Chicago Carlyrlucas@Gmail.Com PROPHETIC URGENCY: THE 1963 JAMES BALDWIN AND MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. WARNINGS TO AMERICA CARLY LUCAS UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO [email protected] artin Luther King’s prophetic speaking minister, who eventually settled in southern M skills and poignant rhetoric made the France, was the more cosmopolitan of the oppression of African Americans a matter of two. However, while Baldwin left the church, urgent public concern at a crucial moment in the church never left Baldwin. In other words, American history. His “Letter from a Baldwin stayed deeply influenced by his Birmingham Jail” offered a white audience congregation and what he learned during his not only justification for nonviolent civil time at the pulpit. King, on the other hand, disobedience in Alabama and the greater was reared in Black Atlanta and the Baptist South but also a forewarning of the activism church sustained his commitment to it for the to come, should his words go unheeded. rest of his life. For both activists, the Baptist “Oppressed people," he warned, “cannot church instilled the importance of humanity remain oppressed forever.”1 This 1963 and justice, giving each a rhetorical statement appeared against the background of framework for their prophetic warnings to images of children and nonviolent marchers America. Significantly, there has not been a attacked by hoses and snarling dogs. Also in published historical juxtaposition of these 1963, James Baldwin published The Fire Next men or these works. However, many scholars, Time. His intention was to inform White such as Charles Payne, have spoken to a America of the brutal perils facing African shifting organizing paradigm, embraced by American citizens as a last hope before youth organizers, which started around the America’s already “burning house” turned to time that Baldwin and King’s works were ashes.2 Baldwin called for a full recognition published.3 Comparing Baldwin and King of the effects of a history of institutionalized allows historians to understand what these racism plaguing African American shifts meant to their generation and how it communities. affected their movement and the discourse on Both pieces, published in 1963, offer race they encouraged up until 1963. an opportunity to compare these two The Fire Next Time engaged the extraordinary writer-critics: their upbringings, reader in a vivid illustration of the despair connections to their churches, their writing facing Harlem, and Black America more styles, and their understandings of race and generally. Similarly, King’s epistle to White racism. Baldwin, a New Yorker, and once a America proclaimed the urgency of African Americans’ demand for social justice. Both 1 essays offered an understanding of the Martin Luther King, Jr., The Autobiography of Martin psychological effects of segregation and racial Luther King, Jr., ed. Clayborne Carson (New York: Grand Central Publishing and Hatchette Book Group, 1998), 197. 3 For more information see: Charles M. Payne, I've Got 2 James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time in Collected the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and Essays, ed. Toni Morrison (New York: Library of the Mississippi Freedom Struggle. (Berkeley: America, 1998), 340. University of California Press, 2007). Symposia 8 (2017): 1-15. © The Author 2017. Published by University of Toronto. All rights reserved. 2 SYMPOSIA bigotry in America. This paper analyzes how, acceptance that could outweigh the denial of through their writings, James Baldwin and paternal love. A “precocious child of the Martin Luther King, Jr. attempted to find their ghetto,” young James regularly witnessed and places in the Black Freedom Struggle, against analyzed the pervasive degradation of the the backdrop of an increasingly militant lived conditions in his neighborhood in approach to these issues.4 This paper also Harlem.6 His own failings as a son and his studies how the comparison of these activists feelings of hopelessness within Black and their rhetoric offers an understanding of America were mutually reinforcing. the differing influences of the Northern and While Dr. Martin Luther King was Southern wings of the Movement. famous for his pastoral oratory, it is less While this analysis focuses primarily on known, however, that James Baldwin had a The Fire Next Time and “Letter from close affiliation with the church as well. Birmingham Jail,” it addresses additional Baldwin took on a role as a preacher for three sources to supplement the argument. years, starting at fourteen.7 As his dream to Throughout their lives, both writers grew as write was squashed by socially imposed activists and thinkers; however, this paper conceptions of his blackness, he found the does not address political understandings that church to be one of a few “gimmick[s]” that surpass the publications of these documents. was socially acceptable for a young African American man.8 Because of his broken The Church and Fatherly Roles relationship with his father, Baldwin desperately “wanted to be somebody’s little David Baldwin, James Baldwin’s father boy.”9 And, because of his skin, he was at played a painful role in Baldwin’s life, “the mercy of so many conundrums … contributing to his tortured search for someone would have taken [him] over.”10 In acceptance.5 As a child, James longed for the 1940s Harlem, it was either the streets or the church. 4 This paper understands militancy as a non-negotiable demand for authentic Black freedom. It posed an immediate threat the edifice of White Supremacy. This father. For more information see: David Leeming, is not to say that King did not effectively confront James Baldwin: A Biography, (New York: Alfred A American racism. In fact, the efficacy of his movement Knopf, Inc., 1994), 3-29. succeeded in one way because it garnered attention 6 David Leeming, James Baldwin, 13. from J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI as a dangerous 7 James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son in Baldwin: group. However, militancy was often deemed more Collected Essays, vol. 2, ed. Toni Morrison (New radical and harder to digest for mainstream White York: Library of America, 1998), 5. America than King’s nonviolent modes of organizing. 8 James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time in Baldwin, 301. Throughout this paper, I examine the Nation of Islam 9 In David Leeming’s biography, James Baldwin: A as the militant activists that King and Baldwin warned Biography, we see how the relationship between of to White America. King’s movement was more Baldwin and his father was strained by Baldwin’s willing to negotiate with White people, whereas the “illegitimacy.” Born out of wedlock, Baldwin’s father Nation of Islam denounced all White people and blamed him for the circumstances of his birth. Baldwin sought Black freedom without consideration for and recalled that his father found his existence “primitive” any involvement of White people. King and Baldwin and un-Christlike. This abusive dynamic was at its both understood how these opposing forces would lead most extreme when David suffered from times of to violence and havoc in America. mental instability, which grew more frequent towards 5 The identity of Baldwin’s biological father is the end of his life. He died in 1943. Leeming suggests unknown. However, David Baldwin, his stepfather, that this dynamic is what pushed Baldwin to the pulpit. fulfilled a father-figure role for Baldwin, so much that For more information see: David Leeming, James he seldom refers to David as anything but his “father.” Baldwin, 7. This paper thus refers to David Baldwin as Baldwin’s 10 Ibid., 303. LUCAS / PROPHETIC URGENCY 3 Baldwin temporarily thrived within became the fourth.14 His father, Martin Luther the church; however, he soon became King, Sr. was the son of a sharecropper from disappointed with the lack of motivation Stockbridge, Georgia. King Sr., or Daddy within his congregation. He lamented that King, challenged racism at an early age, after similar principles governed Black and White seeing a white man who demoralized his churches alike: “Blindness, Loneliness, and father.15 Daddy King acted as president of the Terror, the first principle necessarily and Atlanta NAACP and fought for equal salaries actively cultivated in order to deny the two for teachers and against “Jim Crow elevators others.”11 Baldwin saw the therapeutic in the courthouse.”16 As opposed to Baldwin, function of the Northern church: songs and who grew up witness to a father traumatized rhythmic clapping superficially distracted by internalized racism, King grew up with from self-loathing and despair, brought about constant affirmations of self-love and models by an internalized racism. His time in the of activism. In The Autobiography of Martin pulpit further developed his understanding of Luther King, Jr., King explained that his the ways that racism was not only mother “instilled a sense of self-respect in all institutionalized, but also psychologically of her children from the very beginning.”17 ingrained into Americans. King’s hopeful stance regarding African In one part of The Fire Next Time, American advancement, through nonviolence, “My Dungeon Shook,” a letter written to his was a legacy of this parental support. It is namesake and nephew, Baldwin warned his significant that though Baldwin’s father was nephew not to succumb to these racial less resilient to racial trauma than King’s realities. In this letter, Baldwin spoke of an father was, both men’s mothers offered love inferiority complex that afflicted African in the face of adversity. Baldwin’s mother Americans. His most significant experience of exhibited adoration and encompassing this disparaging social construction was that it tenderness that countered internalized killed his father. He explained to his nephew racism.18 that his grandfather “was defeated long before The ideals present in King’s home he died because, at the bottom of his heart, he were also represented in the larger Baptist really believed what white people said about community.
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