Kousha Navidar: It is The Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Welcome back, everyone. I'm Kousha Navidar. I'm hoping in for Brian today. Now, let's do another installment of our WNYC Centennial series. We're calling it 100 Years of 100 Things. For our eighth installment, the timing's pretty perfect because we're celebrating a 100th birthday or I guess more specifically, we're celebrating a person, an icon who would have been turning 100 just two days from now.

James Baldwin, the writer and civil rights activist, was born on August 2nd, 1924. He was born in Harlem. While his roots here go deep, he had a complicated relationship growing up in this city, in this country, as a Black man with a sexual identity that didn't neatly fit into the categories of the time. Over the course of his life, his work as a writer and novelist made him a leading voice in the United States on race and civil rights. Let's listen to a clip of Baldwin from 1968 talking about why so many riots had broken out at the time, especially within Black communities across the country.

James Baldwin: The reason that Black people are in the streets has to do with the lives they're forced to live in this country. Everybody knows, no matter what they do not know, they wouldn't like to be a Black man in this country. They know that and they shut their minds against the rest of it. All the implications of being a Black father or a Black woman, or a Black son, and all of the implications involved in a human being's endeavor to take care of his wife, to take care of his children, to raise his children, to be men and women in the teeth of a structure, which is built to deny that I can be a human being or that my child can be.

Kousha Navidar: Here to talk to us about James Baldwin is Eddie Glaude Jr. Glaude is a professor at Princeton and author of many books, including, Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own and also his most recent book, We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For. Professor Glaude, thanks so much for joining us and welcome back to WNYC.

Eddie Glaude Jr: Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to the conversation.

Kousha Navidar: Me too. Listeners, we want you to be a part of this conversation as well. How have you listening right now engaged with the work of James Baldwin? Do you have a favorite book of his? Call or text us now or at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Maybe you listening live in Harlem and his legacy means a lot to you or your community, or his activism and words moved you to think differently about America and our history. Why are his words and beliefs important to you today? Give us a call, send us a text. We're at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692.

Professor, we just listened to a clip of James Baldwin trying to give a whole country some insight into why protests were happening in 1968. More than half a century later, those words still feel so present. While you were listening to that clip, did you have any reflections about it? What were you thinking of?

Eddie Glaude Jr: I was actually thinking about the journey that Baldwin had made to that moment. You think about 1953, Go Tell It On The Mountain. You think about 1955, Notes of a Native Son, 1956 Giovanni's Room. You think about the early work, you think about the way in which he's talking about race and identity and history, and by the time you get to '68 the voices has been deepened because it's coded with cigarette smoke, but he's coming out of the reality that the country has turned its back on the promise of the Black freedom movement. He's dealing with loss, grief. Medgar Evers is dead, Malcolm is dead. King has been assassinated and he's watching the country begin the turn.

When I hear him and particularly the tone of the voice, I hear a searching effort to try to figure out as the poet of the moment, how to give voice to grief, betrayal, and possibility all at once.

Kousha Navidar: What was your first introduction to Baldwin? What about his words spoke to you?

Eddie Glaude Jr: My first introduction to Baldwin was The Fire Next Time, that '63 book, which is a compilation of earlier essays, and I was scared. I was too young to deal with what he was saying. I encountered him first as an undergraduate, I grew up in Mississippi on the coast, and so I never really read Baldwin. I come out of a working-class family. There were no books, it was really just a newspaper. I didn't encounter him until I got to Morehouse College, and there he scared the living daylights out of me.

He kept asking me questions that I didn't want to answer because the answer required of me a kind of introspection of dealing with my own wounds, that I wasn't ready for because before you could say anything about the country, about the world, Baldwin insists you have to first deal with you. He scared the living daylights out of me.

Kousha Navidar: That's very powerful. Listeners, I'm sure some of you can share in Professor Glaude's experience and feelings there. What was your first experience with James Baldwin listening right now? Were you scared, like the professor is saying that he was? Give us a call, send us a text. What does Baldwin's work mean to you? We're at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. Professor, you've hinted at some of the things, that we're going to be talking about in this segment. Since we're doing 100 Years of 100 Things, maybe we should go through it chronologically, start at the start. The title of your book is Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own. Help us put Baldwin into context a little bit. What was his America? Specifically, what was New York City like where he grew up?

Eddie Glaude Jr: Baldwin comes of age in a sense. He's the child of southern migrants, so he's that first generation born after there's this mass movement. His stepfather's from Louisiana, his mother's from the Eastern Shore. He's born in August of 1924. You can imagine he's coming of age right against you can juxtapose the Harlem Renaissance with the Great Depression. His family was profoundly poor, so he struggled and you can see he's not, shall we say, African American who comes from Sugar Hill. He's born and raised in the bottom, as it were. That distinction, I think, shows up in his voice. He's a childhood preacher, father was an itinerant, stepfather was an itinerant preacher, and then he decides that he cannot engage in this lie.

The stories are running around in his head. He wasn't the best student in the world, but he was obviously brilliant. He had desires, he was coming to terms with his own sexuality. You can imagine the challenges of feeling what he was feeling on the inside and for others, and having to deal with his father at the same time. You get this young man who leaves and moves to Greenwich Village. There when he tells the stories of what he experienced, he not only experienced freedom, but it's clear that he was haunted by sexual violence.

Then he decides to leave in 1948, and he says that he could have gone anywhere, but Baldwin was lying at that point. He goes to Paris and he goes to Paris because there's this wonderfully rich, expat community there, and it's in Paris that he does something extraordinary. He literally wheels himself into becoming one of the greatest writers the world has ever produced.

Kousha Navidar: That writing has affected a lot of people. We're getting a lot of calls. I'd love to hear from some callers right now. Let's go to Chuck in Philadelphia. Hey, Chuck, welcome to the show.

Chuck: Hi. Thank you, [00:09:18] Eddie, for all that you do and the great work that you do. In the vein of James Baldwin, let me just say, I love the fact that James Baldwin was a luminary in the realm of civil rights, and I admire the great profundity that he brought to humanitarian issues because civil rights is a humanitarian issue and people forget that. I just want to say, can people please read James Baldwin for the Joy of reading James Baldwin, he was a prolific and beautiful writer. His words are painterly and he is just a wonder on the page.

With all of the great things that he has done impacting our society, I think it's equally important to appreciate him for the tremendous writer that he is. Speaking of his time in Paris, if you're interested there's a great little book called Giovanni's Room. It takes many of his experiences in Paris, and puts them on the page in such a way that it comes alive. Thank you guys for allowing me to just say this about him. Thank you.

Kousha Navidar: Oh, Chuck and so beautifully said too, so thank you for that. Go ahead, professor.

Eddie Glaude Jr.: Indeed. He's right. The first thing we have to understand is Baldwin is an artist. He's an extraordinary artist. Toni Morrison had her eulogy for Baldwin when he dies in December of 1987. She says that she found language in Baldwin. The way in which he, how can I put this, he takes the sound of the Black Preacherly tradition, the Black Homiletic tradition. He takes the eloquence of the King James Bible, he's a student of Henry James' sentences.

When you read Henry James' the ambassadors, you can see Baldwin inside those sentences. He's thinking with Proust. He is in so many way the inheritor of Emerson, just on the other side of the tracks. Chuck is absolutely right. We can never lose sight of Baldwin as the artist, as the poet in the broadest sense of that word.

Kousha Navidar: We have a text that came in as well that echoes this. It says, "I was always blown away by Baldwin's mastery of description and sentence structure, a true writer." Chuck, thanks again for that. Whoever texted that thank you as well. There's another text here that in a similar vein talks about the impact that Baldwin has had on folks. It reads, "Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain was first gifted to me by my AP English teacher, Ms. Joanne Miles in 2003 knowing I was a Black gay boy who was less engaged in the white writers that were on the curriculum. He has been a guiding light for me ever since. Thank you, Ms. Miles, for this incredible gift." Shout out to Ms. Miles for that.

Let's talk about Go Tell It on the Mountain. 1953 you mentioned this, professor Baldwin published his first novel. It's semi autobiographical. What parts of his life does he draw from?

Eddie Glaude Jr.: Oh, there's so much of it. I don't want to reduce it to autobiography, because it is fiction, but there's a sense in which John's relationship to his father. John's relationship to the church. John's relationship with Elijah that hint of homo erotic love in the text, but the rhythm of the language, Baldwin is trying to finish the novel in this isolated village, especially I think he writes about this in Stranger in the Village in notes of a Native Son. What he's longing for is the sound of the community out of which he came. The rhythm of the language, and he reaches for the blues.

Kousha Navidar: Tell me about that. Reaches for the blues, what does that mean?

Eddie Glaude Jr.: There's something about the experience. What does it mean to listen to Bessie Smith, or in my case a Bobby Blue Bland? To hear not only the experiences, but the intonation, the passion, the rhythm, that sonic representation of a life of joy, of disappointment, of deeply human interaction. As Baldwin was trying to capture the voices on the page, he had left home, and he longed for home. He longed for the comfort of home. Even as he wrote some very complex essays about his experiences in Harlem, it was still home.

He had tried to capture that, and Go Tell It on the Mountain it's one of its most powerful texts. I always ask my students to read, Go Tell It on the Mountain alongside of The Fire Next Time. The opening of The Fire Next Time actually echoes an interesting sorts of ways of what's going on in Go Tell It on the Mountain.

Kousha Navidar: I want to talk about The Fire Next Time. Before we get to it, there's also a bunch of callers that I would-- at least one right now. Nikita, West Orange, New Jersey. Hey, Nikita, how are you? Welcome to the show.

Nikita: Hi, how are you?

Kousha Navidar: Good, thanks.

Nikita: I've been really enjoying this conversation. Thank you.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely. What's your experience with Baldwin?

Nikita: Oh, yes. My experience with Baldwin, I would say it's paradoxical. When I first really started grappling with some of his work, I was in college myself. It was like this affirmation of having someone put words to things that you're experiencing and thinking, and questions you're asking yourself, but also almost like the disappointment that these conversations have been going on, and these same feelings and these same issues have been happening.

It's like encouraging to feel seen and heard, but also discouraging to realize that maybe not as much has changed as I believed when I was younger had changed. I think it's like a dynamic experience getting to know Baldwin, reading him, listening to some of his quotes, feeling so seen and affirmed by them, but also feeling kind of disappointed and discouraged, that this has been a realization for generations before us too.

Kousha Navidar: Nikita, thank you so much. That term you used at the very beginning paradoxical, I think is a wonderful counterintuitive. Maybe is also another word there that idea that so much time has passed, and yet the words ring so true still. That makes me, professor want to go to The Fire Next Time, which you brought up. This one is two essays. The first was written to Baldwin's nephew. Interesting little fact right here for listeners, this one was in 1963. We're celebrating 100 years of 100 things. 1963 itself 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. How had Baldwin in the country's discourse evolved by that point, had it speaking to Nikita's point?

Eddie Glaude Jr.: Well remembered, this is at the heart of the Black freedom struggle. First of all, with the publication of The Fire Next Time, he ascends as perhaps the most important Black literary voice in the country at the time. You think about Birmingham, you think about the movement in Montgomery. You think about what happened in Arkansas. What was going on in the South. What was about to happen in Washington, D.C., the meeting with Robert Kennedy. He's in the throes of the Black freedom struggle.

What's so important about it, remember the essays were published the year before. One in the New Yorker and the other in another piece, so he's the progressive. He's thinking about movements. He's trying to bear witness to what's happening on the ground. What's happening on the ground, everyday ordinary folk are engaged in the revolutionary practices to change the very foundation of the country, to rip up this practice of Jim Crow, and Fire Next Time is this powerful articulation of that.

It's also this challenge, because the country gets introduced to The Nation of Islam. This was what's so beautiful about Baldwin, Baldwin taught me how to love and to be angry. How to not let the rage overwhelm, but if you're not angry, if you're not experiencing a kind of righteous indignation, what world are you living in? He's giving voice to this in 1963, and remember, we don't hear the language of Black Power until two to three years later. We're already beginning to get a sense of it in his work.

Kousha Navidar: That idea of him being a precursor to a larger movement in that sense reminds me of a clip that we've actually prepared, so it's great timing. In 1968, he went on the Dick Cavett Show, and talked about the state of race relations. Let's listen to a clip from his comments. I'm going to ask you to reflect on it Professor. Here's the clip.

Eddie Glaude Jr.: Sure.

James Baldwin: I don't know what most white people in this country feel, but I can only include what they feel from the state of their institutions. I don't know if white Christians hate Negroes or not, but I know that we have a Christian Church, which is white and a Christian Church which is Black. I know as Malcolm X once put it, it's the most segregated hour in American life is high noon on Sunday. It's a great deal for me about a Christian nation. It means that I can't afford to trust most white Christians, and certainly cannot trust the Christian Church.

I don't know whether the labor unions, and their bosses really hate me, that doesn't matter, but I know I'm not in their unions. I don't know if the real estate lobby is anything against Black people, but I know the real estate lobbyists keep me in the ghetto. I don't know if the Board of Education hates Black people, but I know the textbooks that give my children to read and the schools that we have to go to.

Now, this is the evidence, you want me to make an act of faith, risking myself, my wife, my woman, my assistant, my children on some idealism, which you assure me exists in America, which I have never seen.

Kousha Navidar: There's this resolute moving poetry, I'd have to call it, in the way Baldwin outlines systemic racism. It's also crucial here to remember that Baldwin is saying these things on television, on a popular TV show. That's really something. How do people react to him in this medium?

Eddie Glaude Jr.: [00:20:14] Oh, no. Remember, this is Baldwin in '68. Many folk believe that he's fallen for the siren songs of the so-called Young Black Radicals. Folks believe that he's lost his artistic edge in some ways. That his anger has overwhelmed his pen, but here, he's responding to Paul Weiss. There's this sense in which the philosopher from Yale, he's responding to Paul Weiss's expectation that Black folk haven't earned a deep skepticism about the moral capacities of this country. This airs just not too long after Dr. King has been assassinated, and what does it mean at this moment to expect of Jimmy? Some kind of moral forgiveness, some kind of openness to the possibility that white America will give up the idols of its commitment to whiteness. You can hear the rage in his voice.

"How can you expect me to risk myself and the people I love for something that is just an ideal that you refuse to live up to?" You see?

Kousha Navidar: Yes.

Eddie Glaude Jr.: This part of this prophetic truth-telling, in that moment, Baldwin takes on repetition, that homiletic strategy. He repeats and the rhythm of the repetition allows for the point to be brought home, not at the level of just simply a claim that's being made, but at the level of the emotion, the passion at the level of the heart. At that moment, he's doing something really special.

Kousha Navidar: There's the litany, maybe gospel in a sense based on his roots, but definitely that sense of resoluteness that you're talking about. Great writer, great orator, which I think is something really important for folks to remember. We just got a text, a very practical question. I think a lot of folks will be interested, and the text reads, "What's a good first read to get on the Baldwin train?" Can you answer that?

Eddie Glaude Jr.: It all depends on what your interests are. I think I always want people to read him chronologically, to get a sense of the layered nature of the claims that he's making. If you're interested in the nonfiction, I would urge you to jump into Notes of a Native Son. It's such a powerful text, Many Thousands Gone. The reflections on Everybody's Protest Novel, Notes of a Native Son is in that volume. If you're interested in the fiction, I would say start with Go Tell It on the Mountain.

Don't fall for the then-and-now narrative of Baldwin's work, somehow it's a story of the declension that he loses some steps with the later work. No, you got to get to the later work, to see that he's doing something with the earlier claims in light of the experiences of living.

Kousha Navidar: We got time for just one more caller. Let's go to Amman in Philadelphia. Amman, am I pronouncing your name correctly?

Amman: Yes, that's correct. Thank you.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely.

Amman: Good morning to everyone.

Kousha Navidar: Good morning. Go ahead.

Amman: Professor, there's always the same rewrite of Baldwin's life, and I don't know if anyone's done any research, because he lived in France for so long, why he never spoke on and did it move him in any way, France's occupation of Algiers.

Kousha Navidar: Amman, thank you so much. Yes, go ahead, Professor.

Eddie Glaude Jr.: That's a great question. When you read the 1972 text, No Name in the Street, it's really clear that Baldwin is not trading the American fantasy for a French one. He's clear about what is going on in Algeria. He understands even earlier in the early works, read, Nobody Knows My Name. Some of the early work around the continent is really bad. You could see his politics evolving, but he's clear that he's not trading the American disaster for the French ideal, no. He understands Western Europe, Western civilization to be caught up in this nasty belief that somehow the color of one's skin determines one's value.

At the end of the day, Baldwin was constantly trying to do two things at once. He's trying to keep track of the material conditions of our living, while also keeping track of the interior complexities on the inside of every human being. That's the beauty of his writing and the insight that he provides us on the page.

Kousha Navidar: Amman, we really appreciate your call and bringing that up. I'm looking at the clock, got just a little bit of time left, but I want to bring up your book, Begin Again. One of your concluding chapters is titled A New America, which is a great title because right now we're celebrating 100 years gone by and we're looking ahead, and it's a lot of what you talk about as well in your most recent book, We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For. Got about a minute. In your mind, as we look ahead to the next 100 years of New America, what's in multiple elements of Baldwin's work that you or I or someone listening should hold close?

Eddie Glaude Jr.: Baldwin is going to insist that we not find comfort in safety, that we run towards our fears, that we tell ourselves the truth about who we are. I think based upon my reading, for 250 years, and remember, the 250th anniversary of the nation is right around the corner, we have failed to confront who we actually are, so that we could discover a different way of being together. Here, we are always reaching, reaching for the possibility of the future, but not dealing with the ghost of the past that have us by the throat.

I think in this moment here in 2024, we're still grappling with the tragic choice that's at the heart of this fragile experiment. The question is, can we begin again? Begin Again comes from the last novel Just Above My Head, and that is you don't abdicate responsibility. What does it mean to take on responsibility? If you do, then you get up and you face the ugliness and you try, try again. It's Sisyphean almost, but you got to begin again. We have to be honest with ourselves, we have to be honest with who we are. We have to be honest with what threatens democracy today if we're going to release ourselves into a new future.

Kousha Navidar: Get up, be honest and try and try again. Beautiful thoughts to end on. We will have to leave it there for today. That was the eighth thing in our Centennial Series, 100 Years of 100 Things. Many thanks to my guest, Professor Eddie Glaude Jr. for taking us through the past 100 years of James Baldwin. Eddie is a professor at Princeton and the author of many books, including, Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own and his most recent from earlier this year, it's called, We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For.

Professor Glaude, thanks so much for joining us on the show.

Eddie Glaude Jr.: Thank you for having me.

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