Fear of a Black President: James Baldwin and the Right to the City
Monday February 15th - 7:30PM
The Brecht Forum
451 West Street, New York, NY 10014
In recognition of Black History Month, and with a critical eye toward what Presidents Day means to us now 14 months into Barack Obama's presidency, we present the first in a series of film programs focused on James Baldwin's life and ideas. The series is leading up to a Baldwin conference currently being organized by Rich Blint to take place at CUNY this fall.
This first program features two films made for broadcast on public television, both produced during the tumultuous Spring of 1963. Take This Hammer is filmed during exact moment (April/May) of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s widely reported campaign of non-violent direct action in Birmingham, Alabama. It is during this time Baldwin was making appearances and fundraising for the Congress of Racial Equality, and when his portrait would appear on the cover of Time magazine (17 May). The Negro and the American Promise is filmed in New York City just weeks later--"immediately after," Kenneth Clark tells us, Baldwin's famous meeting with then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and his assistant Burke Marshall (24 May). Kennedy had asked Baldwin to assemble a group to meet together, which reportedly included his brother David Baldwin, Harry Belafonte, Kenneth Clark, Lorraine Hansberry, Lena Horne, his lawyer Clarence Jones, his literary agent Bob Mills, CORE organizer Jerome Smith, and Rip Torn.
Take This Hammer features Baldwin in San Francisco, meeting with local organizers as well as folks on the street. City life had a deep impact on his life and work, and this piece is a great document of Baldwin's concept of race, class, and the urban landscape. The Negro and the American Promise was hosted by Kenneth Clark and featured three segments--separate conversations with Martin Luther King (1929-1968), Malcolm X (1925-1965), and concluding with Baldwin. The company and billing speaks to Baldwin's influence at the time, and showcases his eloquence and intensity, as well as both poise and grace.*
--Take This Hammer - KQED Film Unit, 1964, 44 minutes
--The Negro and the American Promise [excerpt] - Kenneth Clark & Henry Morgenthau, III, 1963, 18 minutes
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 62 minutes | Digital Projection
Discussion with:
--Rich Blint - graduate student at NYU
--Kenyon Farrow - Executive Director of Queers for Economic Justice, co-editor of Letters From Young Activists: Today’s Rebels Speak Out (Nation Books, 2005)
Co-curated by Kazembe Balagun
*We can't help but think back to our Pier Paolo Pasolini program, "Anger and Disappointment," which featured his non-fiction films from this same time. Baldwin (1924-1987) and Pasolini (1922-1975) have far more in common than we'd ever realized--both homosexual, both well-known and controversial public intellectuals, and both accomplished polymaths.