This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.
Transcription: [00:41:23]
{SPEAKER name="James Baldwin"}
I don't know if I can make this clear.
[00:41:26]
But I was born in a church and spent most of my life, being dragged, like a dishrag through various pulpits.
[00:41:38]
and singing in frnt of areas, church audiences because my father liked that kind of thing.
[00:41:43]
And I left when I was 17 and, uhm, I haven't been back to church since.
[00:41:52]
But, as I got older and I began to,
[00:41:56]
to deal with my own life in a way which I couldn't ? as a child or as an adolescent.
[00:42:04]
I began to try to find out, as everybody does have to at some point, find out,
[00:42:09]
who he is, and what he wants and where he really comes from
[00:42:13]
and what really nourishes him, what really ? him
[00:42:17]
how he was put together and now that he is put together this way
[00:42:20]
what is he going to do with it
[00:42:23]
Then I began to realize that,
[00:42:25]
in all those years,
[00:42:28]
that I spent cursing out the organist and pianist and wishing to God the minister would stop talking.
[00:42:34]
All those terrible Sundays, taught me something which I could not have learned in any other way,
[00:42:44]
And what it taught me is almost impossible to say,
[00:42:48]
but, heard it, just a few minutes ago and you did too.
[00:42:52]
When these people, when these children are singing
[00:42:56]
When I say children or I say kids, by the way, I don't mean it patronizingly,at all
[00:43:00]
I mean, I'm just a little older than you, that's all.
[00:43:06]
Now, it occurs to me that there's something in this which is, of great value, to this entire country.
[00:43:13]
For me, it's something of a miracle and I think I can use that word.
[00:43:18]
That the songs which we created in privacy, and in anguish and in darkness.
[00:43:23]
by black, pagans, captive on these shores.
[00:43:29]
The music they evolved, created.
[00:43:31]
Who sustain themselves in the most terrible, terrible oppression that has ever been,
[00:43:38]
that have ever happened, in any case, in the Western world.
[00:43:42]
That these songs have somehow come down
[00:43:45]
all these bloodstained ages and now metaphosed, metaphosed
[00:43:50]
become, changed into a vehicle, to liberate,
[00:43:55]
not only, the Negro of this country, but all the people in