I have just finished watching an incredibly powerful documentary based on American writer/activist, James Baldwin's unfinished manuscript Remember This House
“I Am Not Your Negro” examines the centuries-old history of racism in the United States through Baldwin's personal recollections of civil rights leaders, such as: Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.
Below, are some of the profound quotes that struck me from this very moving film, which are particularly pertinent, today, during the ongoing race protests in the USA, following the murder of George Floyd.
This film should be required viewing, in schools, so that the next generation does not repeat our sins...
No kingdom can maintain itself by force alone. Force does not work the way its advocates think in fact it does.
It does not, for example, reveal to the victim the strength of the adversary.
On the contrary, it reveals the weakness, even the panic of the adversary.
Any white man says give me liberty or give me death, the entire white world applauds.
When a Black man says exactly the same thing...
he’s judged a criminal, treated like one & everything possible is done to make an example of this bad nigga, so there won't be anymore like him.
The story of the Negro in America is the story of America... It is not a very pretty story
I’m forced to believe that we can survive whatever we must survive. But the future of the Negro in this country is precisely as bright or as dark as the future of the country.
To look around the United States today is enough to make prophets and angels weep.
You can't lynch me and keep me in ghettos without becoming something monstrous yourselves.
Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history. If we pretend otherwise, to put it very brutally, we literally are criminals.
—-James Baldwin
