James Baldwin was an American writer and social critic. In a interview with Julius Lester in the New York Times (published in May 1984) he said...
Perhaps I did not succumb to ideology … because I have never seen myself as a spokesman. I am a witness. In the church in which I was raised you were supposed to bear witness to the truth. Now, later on, you wonder what in the world the truth is, but you do know what a lie is.
James Arthur "Jimmy" Baldwin