Excerpt

From I Am Not Your Negro

Author James Baldwin and Raoul Peck

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I Am Not Your Negro by James Baldwin

The companion volume to the stunning new documentary that uses James Baldwin's words to examine the tragic history of race in America: "a film of immense power" (The Guardian) certain to become a classic.

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As concerns Malcolm and Martin,
I watched two men, coming from unimaginably different backgrounds,
whose positions, originally, were poles apart,
driven closer and closer together.

By the time each died, their positions had become virtually the same position.
It can be said, indeed, that Martin picked up Malcolm’s burden,
articulated the vision which Malcolm had begun to see,
and for which he paid with his life.
And that Malcolm was one of the people Martin saw on the mountaintop.

Medgar was too young to have seen this happen,though he hoped for it, and would not have been surprised;
but Medgar was murdered first.

I was older than Medgar, Malcolm, and Martin.
I was raised to believe that the eldest was supposed to be a model for the younger,
and was, of course, expected to die first.

Not one of these three lived to be forty.

Publisher Vintage

Categories Biography & Memoir History Non-Fiction

James Baldwin (1924–1987) was a novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, appeared in 1953 to excellent reviews, and his essay collections Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time were bestsellers that made him an influential figure in the growing civil rights movement. Baldwin spent much of his life in France, where he moved to escape the racism and homophobia of the United States. He died in France in 1987, a year after being made a Commander of the French Legion of Honor.