Exhibitions at the Schomburg Center for research in black culture coming to you live from new york city in my little living room. Thank you for tuning in to this full day of conversation. 1963, magazine profile of james talks about reading his way to the library in harlem where he grew up which is what became the Schomburg Center. He said you think your pain and heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world but then you read, it was books that taught me the things that tormented me most were the very things that brought me to the people who are alive, have ever been alive. Who says you cant read or write deliberation . You can see a Literary Festival expands notions of black mans introducing to scholars, Childrens Book authors, memoirs, those who write our joy and sorrow, rage and triumph. Those who have new ideas and spark our nation, help us make sense of the path past the plan for the future. Take you to all of our authors and moderators on our virtual stage today, i will call each name. Thank you cortez, chase, roxan roxanne, doctor brian jones, wanda, shane, alexandria, uganda titman. I think they are all authors and writers and thinkers who exhibit exactly what i described previously. Earlier this summer, the Schomburg Center released a black liberation meeting for adults and young people. I hope you will create your own and add to the list we have created you can find those books and more by visiting our website at schomburg. Orc. Black culture as you saw in the video, celebrating its 95 years of the worlds leading cultural institutions and the expedition materials focused on black experiences. The items that eliminate the history and culture, James Baldwin, article we got. Imposed by covid19, we have migrated online or you can access the archival collections and enjoy programs. Please visit our website at schomburg. Org. By the end of the Literary Festival, we have engaged 35 authors, moderators sharing narratives on the u. S. Leading in two diverse expenses of peoples dissent. It took off the final day of the festival, author of begin again, James Baldwin and his urgent message. If you are watching from our website, scroll down to the bottom, you can also shop through the schomburg website and navigate between the pages. Larson is also a librarian. Last but not least, check out the book, you can also rewatch all the programs that have happened monday through thursd thursday. In conversation with my colleague, the director of the Schomburg Center. Following the conversation, we will have time, possibly, hopefully, for questions from the audience. Please submit your questions at any time we will do our best to get as many as possible. A reminder, you can order begin again if youre not on our Schomburg Center literary website, you can go online. Use the audience will not be part, please be mindful. Be kind to your audience and thank you for tuning in. Welcome doctor brian jones to introduce doctor eddie. Hello. I am excited to be here and for this conversation with our first guests. I have so many questions. I promise to save time for your questions as well so please submit those in the chat. I am thrilled to introduce eddie junior, the James S Mcdonald distinguish University Professor and chair of the department of africanamerican studies at princeton university. Hes from mississippi graduate of Morehouse College in atlanta, georgia and author of several books including democracy and black. Race still enslaves the american soul is here to take to talk about his newest book, begin again James Baldwins america and urgent lessons for our own. I understand professor has a selection to read for us as we begin today. Please call me eddie. We can put aside all formalities. First, let me thank the schomburg and brother kevin and especially you, for allowing me allowing me to talk about the book. I decided to read from the introduction. I arrived in germany on a hot saturday morning the day after leaving new jersey. This was the beginning of my stay at the university in the 2019 james w a word, one on the Eastern Shore of maryland and, 1809. Escaping slavery at the age of 18. As the first black man to attend classes at the yale university. A minister in 1849, it afforded him honorary doctorate. The first time to believe European University on his honor of an africanamerican. Here i was, a country boy from mississippi who were about religious and race in the u. S. Flying across the world, the university founded in 1886. I met james, an american graduate student in a small town in michigan sitting there and i checked into my apartment, number two, 60 number 64. He got me settled on the first day of my university. The apartment was small. I opened the door and immediately found myself in a kitchenette with the bathroom shower right next to it. The stove had two burners, the oven and microwave. Five steps in, i stood in my bedroom, living room, dining room. The bed doubled as a couch and i sat at my desk, nothing else mattered after that. The apartment with high ceilings, kept the room closing in on you. Comfort was his primary concern. Part of the campus, it is a stretch to describe it campus in any american sense, it wasnt damaged at all. The buildings felt they were constructed in the 60s and 70s. Little character, strictly functional. They waited for me outside. We were going to buy my train pass, check out the Grocery Store and travel to the old ci city. As we entered the station, i heard screaming people in front of us stood still and stared at commotion. I followed their eye. For police were piled on a black man. One officer had his knee on the mans back and the others twisted his arms, his hands halfway down his legs. His bare butt exposed. He was down on the concrete as if they were trying to leave an imprint on him the man let out a bloodcurdling scream. All eyes were on him as the crowd stood by and watched intently like spectators at a soccer game without real attachment to the players. They watched the police the black man, their faces revealed nothing. They were inscrutable, at least to me. I had not been there for two hours and police had a black man pressed down on the concrete there knee in his back. He screamed again, i didnt understand his pain worse. I didnt know what he had done, if anything. I only knew screaming was all too familiar. James turned deep red and for some reason, felt the need to apologize to me. Theres a kind of isolation being in a place where you did not know the language. Words cannot interrupt your vision, silence allows you to see different. During my short time in heidelberg, the wildflowers, the cobblestone rose, the old building leading into new construction. One noticed sadness, perhaps the feeling of a place experiencing devastation of war or the effect of having the u. S. Military base shutdown and the struggle of figuring out what would happen next. I saw the whiteness of the pla place, the color here and there and played all green and served only if youre being food. A language i could not understand. I was experiencing even in that moment, i was not in the United States and in my mind, that is a good thing. I didnt have to go on television and explain what happened at the train station, i didnt have to explain to james either. I wondered at the time if this is what James Baldwin initially felt when he lived abroad. Escape to deal what was happening. It was a refuge of sort in his early days. Whatever baldwin faces there, at least he didnt have to deal with the racial nonsense here and what was afforded him, he could reimagine himself. Its exhausting to find oneself over and over again navigating the world that the assumptions about you and those who look like you. To see and read about insert harm, death and english but another reason because you are black or black and for black and trans work for me, the daily grind consuming. I cannot escape the news, i am drowning in it. The nastiness of the country as so many feel like its going underwater. Heidelberg afforded some critical distance of brief refuge from it all. A small apartment, a place where did not know the language. Offered me opportunity to be still, quiet my head and think about my country the moment we currently find ourselves in. There we go. Thank you so much for that excerpt from the introduction and as you speak, speak it out loud, i am thinking about the feeling so many people are having just this week that is hurting and feeling sometimes underwater in the news cycle. But why is it that this book, by you, who is so often a political commentator, what drew you back to baldwin as a way to think about where we are right now . I have been thinking with baldwin for about 30 years. Ever since graduate school. Although, i was hesitant in grad school to approach him because i knew what he would do that when i finally started reading him, he became one of the most important resources how i made sense of the world and how i made sense of democracy, how i read that system so baldwin is kind of a scholarly resource so in the shade of blue, every aspect of the book is, except the last chapter, is baldwin. In democracy, baldwin is the spine of the book. As im trying to engage aristotle dewey, baldwin is the screen door they have to come through for me to say what i said in that book so finally i decided to bring him on stage, get in from behind the scene, the front of the stage. It had everything to do with my own attempt, to grapple with my own and i knew what jimmy went through in the latter days of his career. I wanted to find resources to grapple with my own despair in the states of what looks like, in the face of what is. These folks had done it again. White folks have done it again and i had to find, i had to make sense of it and jimmy was the first person i turned to. To help us understand the title following on that, what is the sense in which you saw baldwin begin again. Begin again after what . Is what you see it beginning again or needing to begin again . A wonderful question. His last novel, just above my head, it is an epic book in so many ways. Gospel music at its core. Its the moment in the text were in the novel where the character says describe what happens after the assassination, he said the dream was shattered in effect and people scattered and we knew we did. Some went bad, some were killed, some were in jail. He says responsibility is not lost, its advocated. If one refuses application that it begins. Baldwin collapsed that of doctor king and 68. They murdered the apostle of love and what does that say about the country . He had to figure out how to pick up the pieces, 69 he attempted suicide and he found some rest but he was still very fragile and vulnerable. Although when the race came out, the first manuscript in the aftermath of his assassination. In there, hes trying to pick up the pieces and give birth to that book. It took everything baldwin was trying to grapple with the fact that the country had turned its back on the promise, the sacrifice of the black freedom. Its not only collected Richard Nixon and 68 and 72 but elected Ronald Reagan of all people is trying to make sense of that moment and to make sense of those of us who survived it and those of us were coming of age in it. So to answer the latter part of your question, i wanted to figure out, give an account of the latest betrayal i wanted to give an account of all of those activists, wanted to write to all the activists in 2014 and before who risked everything to bring the countrys attention to what the police were doing to us. Im thinking about ferguson and the advocates in many who are dead. Some are in jail and some were dying in front of us. It is a country doubled down on this obviously unqualified human being. I wanted to write to them in our moment of betrayal, what i call in the book the aftermath. Rights. There is an interesting way in which baldwin, and i see you in this book, following baldwins example in mining and interrogating the society and in doing so, or trying to do so more prospectively analyzing and interrogating. Not giving up on people. I cant get over this quote, there are so many wonderful baldwin quotes you share with us in this book. Let me just read one. This is the aftermath kings assassination. This is baldwin, most people are not in action very much and yet, every human being and unprecedented miracle. One tries to treat them as the miracles they are while trying to protect oneself against the disasters they become. I wonder if you could talk a bit about the personal journey for you in writing this book and what you wrestled with. Baldwin is wrestling with a lot. Hes got a lot of demons chasing him, he attempted suicide but for him to come out of these dramatic expenses of movement, trying to reconcile people in disasters feels to me helpful. In the moment, i lived my life, so i can turn around. The name of the street in that moment. That paragraph is so important because the first section of that paragraph, his death, that tremendous day in atlanta, something has altered in me, something has gone. He gives us this insight human beings are miracles and disasters. Hes trying to give an account of what is broken in him because he believes in this system, it is not worth living. Unless we say anything about the messiness of the world, we have to deal with the messiness of our own lives so this is why baldwin is one of the critical voices were a certain kind of journalism including the autobiographical. The way in which we account for the world, we implicate ourselves in it. There is this i barely survived writing to think book. Almost drink myself into a stupor part of the everything to do with confronting, as ive said over and over, the scaffolding of my own life. That became the precondition to speak honestly about the country and misery. Because the. After fantasize. The misery. It is in that moment when i in the honest, thats when the words on the page started to jump. I should just get us shot out to schaumburg because in the archives, in the manuscripts, i found so many resources where jimmy is just grappling with the grittiness or the funkiness of human doings and human sufferi suffering. Thank you for the shout out to the schaumburg center. You were a frequent, back when we could physically be there. I cant wait until we can get back. Say something about your experience there. Conducting research the. Its wonderful. Because of my schedule, sometimes i dont know when im going to be in the city. I would get a call from joe wanting me to be on and i would shoot a quick email and usually thats supposed to happen and particularly given the demand, that time around, i would be lucky and there would be Space Available and others would do Amazing Things for me but i would leave morning joe and make my way to the schaumburg. Of course it would be too early so i would have to go around to the library. I am in the county Library Getting myself together. I am in a suit and people would say i think i just saw you. Thered be shout outs and everything that would make my way to the schaumburg and it was there i found this memo letter that baldwin wrote to robert kennedy. A begging letter. Or the letter i found which was so amazing, which i wrote about later it didnt make it into the book but this exchange that he had with hugh downs. And with hugh downs recent death, i actually used some of this paragraphs on twitter, where downs is asking baldwin for help, right . He wants to be more useful to this moment and baldwin writes this extraordinary letter, or the exchanges between him and Toni Morrison and i would be in the library trying desperately not to shout, not to say, oh, my god, thats sort of thing. Amazing. Im thinking about what you said about writing this book for activists, and baldwin, too as you describe, saw himself as loyal and accountable to the activists, also intention with them. Seems like particularly after kings death theres a tension with baldwin and the black Power Movement in particular, and one of those tensions is about blackness and identity and baldwins view of blackness and identity as something that is a kind of essential resource for organizing and struggling but also potentially a trap. I think baldwins relationship with black power is as with everything with him, is complex and nuanced. He never im sure he had Johnnie Walker black until the sun rows, sun rose, but he understood why stokley or tour rey would say black power in june of 66 in greenwood, mississippi. He refused to let the nation smith those. Refused to let the black bourgeois dismiss them. The same young people who were fighting and confronting raw terror in the bowels of the south. As youthful know we tend to tell the story of black power as if its holy separate from the Civil Rights Movement when theyre some of the same actors, stokley carmikele was one of the most he only broke nonviolent discipline once and thats when he Police Attacked dr. King. So baldwin understood black power and also understand understood its traps. Worried about a certain preoccupation with a black ms. Does the preoccupation with power according to bailed bald wine should notice blind us to the more question, who do we take ourselveses to be, and if we found ourselves fixating on a category that blinds us to the humanity of the human being right in front of us, we can in fact become monsterrous, too so theres an ongoing critique of what he calls the mystic tall black bullshit. Jimmy will be jimmy. But at the same time he is critical of a certain kind of info vacation of blackness, he also understands its the beauty of invocation and the take the blackness and possess it as our own we have reject our agreement with White America. So black is beautiful for this man born in harlem in 1924, to assert that is a radical injures to and suggests we have finally left behind our internal agreement with what White America says about us. Thats powerful. But then he has to also deal with the likes of Eldridge Cleaver and folks who questioned his sexualit