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“Other people cannot see what I see whenever I look into your father’s face, for behind your father’s face as it is today are all those other faces which were his.��

This is from “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation����

I chose this quote because it’s universal. When we look at the faces of our children, our grandchildren, our nieces and nephews, we see those in our family who came before them.

I remember being shown a beautiful black and white 8 x 10 photo of the striking profile of a woman wearing a bit of a long scarf and asked who I thought it was. I said I knew it was my friend, taken when she was a bit younger. Not only was it not my friend, it was her great-aunt! Not her mother, not her auntie or grandmother �� her GREAT aunt. What a shock that was. Admittedly it was a profile shot, not a full-face photo, but still!

It’s something I feel sorry about for friends who were adopted and haven’t found (or even looked for) their biological roots. They can enjoy their rewards looking ‘down�� but not looking back ‘up��.

The letter is a warning, earnest advice, and a sharing of Uncle James’s experience growing up black in New York. This was written in 1963, just before the Civil Rights Act was passed in the US, but I have to say, Baldwin speaks about much broader issues than an Act can cover. The letter to his nephew is brief, but heartfelt.

“The details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you.��

He wants young James, his namesake, to know to believe in the future, and the ability to help white people stop fearing blacks and their ‘sudden�� (to whites) rise in the world.

“For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become. It will be hard, James, but you come from sturdy, peasant stock, men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads, and, in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity. You come from a long line of great poets, some of the greatest poets since Homer.��

The second part of the book is Down at the Cross - Letter from a Region in My Mind

Baldwin speaks of his youth, his father, his early life as a very young pastor, who learned at first-hand how religion rules the people.

“Being in the pulpit was like being in the theatre; I was behind the scenes and knew how the illusion was worked.
. . .
I knew how to work on a congregation until the last dime was surrendered �� it was not very hard to do �� and I knew where the money for ‘the Lord’s work�� went. I knew, though I did not wish to know it, that I had no respect for the people with whom I worked.��

He became a writer and gained some fame, which brought him to the attention of the growing Muslim movement. He speaks often of Negroes, which is the term I was taught as the polite one, and he discovered that the Muslim God is black, unlike the Christian God, who is white. He can see how this will appeal to the American Negro, who has no home, no country of his own.

He does not favour violence, but he can see the risks of business as usual in America.

��. . . people from whom everything has been taken away, including, most crucially, their sense of their own worth. People cannot live without this sense; they will do anything whatever to regain it. This is why the most dangerous creation of any society is that man who has nothing to lose. You do not need ten such men �� one will do.��

This is almost 60 years ago.

“It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate.��

"Whose foot is on your neck. "

Make that “knee��, and you can see how little has changed. I can only hope that we learn to behave better and teach all children not to hate. I imagine he would be disappointed that we're still having to protest that Black Lives Matter.

Powerful stuff, beautifully written.
#BLM