In Esquire’s July 1968 issue, published just after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., the magazine talked to James Baldwin about the state of race relations in the country. We’ve republished the interview in full—and his words are incredibly relevant today.
Read the landmark 1968 Q&A on race in America.
Image: U.S. Information Agency. Press and Publications Service. (ca. 1953 – ca. 1978), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The creation of Israel was and is a violent process that entailed the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland to establish the state of Israel.
What is your greatest fear?
That the lessons of history have been forgotten and we are sleepwalking towards disaster.
Blind to their own biases and insulated from communities they do not encounter or understand, journalists and editors feel entitled to make judgments about what is and what is not racism. Hence the decision by Ian Murray, executive director of the Society of Editors, to publish a statement that unilaterally exonerated the entire UK press of all charges of racism.
n a word, it is international morality that is at stake. Have the signatures appended to a Treaty value only in so far as the signatory Powers have a personal, direct and immediate interest involved?
We forget at our peril, however, that the American tradition of lynching is both productive and modern.
At the end of my presidency, Michelle and I boarded Air Force One for the last time and traveled west for a long-deferred break. The mood on the plane was bittersweet. Both of us were drained, physically and emotionally, not only by the labors of the previous eight years but by the unexpected results of …
The Congo’s independence is a decisive step towards the liberation of the whole African continent.
For many, myself included, offering African nations their own art treasures on long-term loans is not enough.
While he stood on a pedestal the significance of slavery to his life and to his collection was rendered invisible.
