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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