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FREEDOMWAYS
FOURTH QUARTER 1968

wonderful and exciting addition. Courses in black literature, in jazz history, appreciation and theory, in the history of black music in America from slave chants to John Coltrane, in the history of the black struggle for full constitutional rights and political power-all of these are things with which are concerned. The black college should the place where this kind of inquiry thrives.
When it does, the black college will be a place of hope for our people, a stepping-stone toward a solid concept of our reality and a competence in the tasks we set for ourselves.
If this kind of development does not take place, I'm afraid we're going to have to sing the blues for the Negro college. Certainly the poignant blues of estrangement, one of the last written by the great poet-singer Otis Redding, would be apt:

Should I ask you
what your name is?
Should you ask me
the same?
Let's don't be wastin' our time
My heart can't stand it
another time...

It is not really a "Negro revolution" that is upsetting this country. What is upsetting the country is a sense of its own identity. If, for example, one managed to change the curriculum in all the schools so that Negroes learned more about themselves and their real contributions to this culture, you would be liberating not only Negroes, you'd be liberating white people who known nothing about their own history. And the reason is that if you are compelled to lie about one aspect of anybody's history, you must lie about it all. If you have to lie about my real role here, if you have to pretend that I hoed all that all that cotton just because I loved you, then you have done something to yourself. You are mad. 
-James Baldwin from "A Talk to Teachers,"
December 1963

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Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-12 22:16:56