I Am A Man, I am Not Your Negro

     In the film I Am Not Your Negro by Raoul Peck was both inspiring and sickening in the same viewing. It was almost like James Baldwin had a magic crystal ball in 1968 and knew what was to come regarding the struggle for justice amongst the black community. He predicted the Black Lives Matter Movement. Just as Robert F. Kennedy had prophesied before he was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel, in Los Angeles in 1968 he said that in twenty years a man of color would become president. His prophecy came true with the election of Barack Hussein Obama II in 2009. However, although we elected our first black president, it has been marred from the ever constant struggle for blacks to be seen as equal members of US society. Baldwin's account is haunting in that he was a witness to lives and death of three prominent men, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr whose words will echo throughout history forever. 

    One of the first things that I noticed from this film was James Baldwin's accent and immediately knew he was native New Yorker. My next guess was that he was from Harlem, not because he was black, but he was a man who was ahead of his time. He talked about seeking refuge in Paris in 1948, not only because of his writing ability, but because Parisians were more tolerant of people of color than the United States. His greatest concern throughout the film was "what was going to happen to the people of color in this country?" I feel like 2020 is the new 1968. However, some see this as a detriment to making American Great Again. The question remains as we think back to 1950’s Americana and even today; it is great for who? So I ask, what has been done for people of color in this country? The film transitions to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968). I had the pleasure of walking in history on April 16th 2020 when me and my husband were married in Memphis, Tennessee. We held our small southern wedding at the Chapel in the Woods on the Graceland estate and had our reception at Central BBQ in Memphis. Little did we know that it was across the street from the Lorraine Motel, now the National Civil Rights Museum. An embarrassment to me as a history teacher, but many of my history teachers glanced over this part of history since it fell at the end of the textbook. 

     To further recollect here, it was an interaction on my wedding eve that I would never forget. As my husband and I arranged for an Uber to pick us up from Beale Street, to take us back to the Guesthouse where we had after hours drinks and blues at BB King's in Memphis. So we were talking with our driver who was a native Memphian. He asked why we were in town. We expressed getting married at Graceland. When the topic of Elvis came up, he bluntly said "what did Elvis' do for people of color?" This brief interaction changed my whole perception that not everyone views certain individuals the same. This held true in the film regarding the FBI files put together on James Baldwin, composed by J. Edgar Hoover, especially that Baldwin was a homosexual. Yet, there has been allegations that Hoover dabbled in wearing women's clothes. There was also similar files on Martin Luther King Jr. who was made out to be an adulterar and Malcolm X was an extremist. 

    The film transitions to the integration of the schools, after the passing of Brown vs. the Board of Education (1954). There is remastered video feed of the forced desegregation, particularly of that of Little Rock Central High School, Arkansas. In history class, I only saw pictures of the Little Rock Nine in history books, however, it was something else to experience in remastered video. It felt so real that I could feel the hatred, bigotry and violence just through the screen. Things were no different here in Providence, RI, especially the other Central High School where the after effects our Brown vs. the Board of Education's decision caused race riots at the school in the 1960's. In the article Dis/ability critical race studies (Discrit): theorizing at the intersections of race and disability by Annama, Connor and Ferri "Brown vs. Board of Education, which was passed at a time when it was in the best interests of whites, who were working to defeat communism and needed to win the hearts and minds of those in third world and, for that matter African Americans in the US, to end segregation." This is expressing that desegregation was a smoke screen for the atrocities being committed in Vietnam. Dr. King mentions this briefly in the film. The film also chronicles the role of black men in cinema. One of the leading men of his time was American-Bahamian actor Sidney Poitier. It was in the film Lilies of the Field that I had seen in parochial school, but it would be Guess Who's Coming to Dinner in 1967 that confront interracial relationships at that time. Whereas, also in 1967 court case Loving vs. Virginia was being fought to end anti-miscegenation in Virginia where Richard Loving who was white, fell in love with a black woman Mildred Jeter. It is my impression that this made many people uncomfortable at the time and interracial relationships. In certain states, it was illegal to marry someone of the opposite race. 

    The film also divulges that freedom and democracy does not exist for people of color. It also shows this perpetuation of this comfortable fantasy that does not exist for all. Baldwin makes emphasis of this type of "real fear" among people who are black, especially by those in white hierarchical positions "master narrative" comes to mind. This is evident among his discussion with Dr. Paul Weiss who clearly had no idea what life was like for someone of color as he sat there objectively still looking at the world through his rose colored glasses. There is also this constant juxtapose of the beliefs of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. King took a stance of non-violence, where Malcom X believed that violence was necessary. The film then shows the death of Martin Luther King Jr. and how his death was not an end, but a beginning. We are still in the throws of fighting, but it is up to the individual to determine their own complacency. 

In the end it is Baldwin's words that echo with me in that "not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." History is indeed the present and not the past.