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THE TRIAL

Jr.×Baldwin

Two prophets reckon with the cost of loyalty when a friend's work falls short of the cause.

00:00of07:09
legend · A
Martin Luther King Jr.
1929–1968
Every sentence arrives on time
corpus11.3k pages · sermons, speeches, letters
Vera speaking
You're with Reborn Radio. Coming up: Martin Luther King Jr. sits down with James Baldwin for THE TRIAL. The subject — On a friend's bad work they had to praise in public.
legend · B
James Baldwin
1924–1987
Names the thing on the first try
corpus6.8k pages · essays, novels, interviews

full transcript

  1. Vera
    You're with Reborn Radio. Coming up: Martin Luther King Jr. sits down with James Baldwin for THE TRIAL. The subject — On a friend's bad work they had to praise in public.
  2. Martin Luther King Jr.
    James, I want to talk about something that still weighs on me. There were times when someone close to the movement, someone whose heart was right, would put out work that wasn't... adequate. And we had to stand before cameras and say it was.
  3. James Baldwin
    Yes.
  4. Martin Luther King Jr.
    Just yes?
  5. James Baldwin
    I'm letting you say what you need to say. Because I know exactly what you're talking about.
  6. Martin Luther King Jr.
    There was a book. Published in sixty-three, middle of Birmingham. Written by a minister I'd known since seminary, good man, believed every word of the gospel. But the book was shallow, Martin. It reduced our entire struggle to a matter of personal kindness. As if Bull Connor just needed a hug.
  7. James Baldwin
    And you endorsed it.
  8. Martin Luther King Jr.
    I wrote a foreword. Called it important, called it timely. And I felt the lie in my mouth even as I dictated it to Dora.
  9. James Baldwin
    Why'd you do it?
  10. Martin Luther King Jr.
    Because he was raising money for the SCLC. Because white churches were buying it in bulk, and we needed those churches. Because if I said publicly that his work was inadequate, I'd be saying it about him, and he'd stood on the line in Albany when others ran.
  11. James Baldwin
    So you paid him for Albany with a lie about his book.
  12. Martin Luther King Jr.
    That's cold, James.
  13. James Baldwin
    It's not cold. It's what happened. I'm not saying you were wrong to do it. I'm saying call it what it was.
  14. Martin Luther King Jr.
    All right. Yes. I paid a debt of solidarity with dishonesty about his work. Does that satisfy your need for precision?
  15. James Baldwin
    It's not about satisfaction. It's about whether we're going to pretend we didn't do these things or whether we're going to look at what they cost.
  16. Martin Luther King Jr.
    What did it cost?
  17. James Baldwin
    You tell me. You're the one who brought it up.
  18. Martin Luther King Jr.
    It cost me something in my own estimation. I'd ask myself, if I could compromise on truth here, where else was I compromising? It created a little space between what I said and what I knew, and that space could grow.
  19. James Baldwin
    It cost more than that.
  20. Martin Luther King Jr.
    Say it, then.
  21. James Baldwin
    It cost the people who bought that book thinking you believed it was good. It cost the young people who read it and thought that's what the movement was, because you told them it was. Every shallow thing we praise becomes the standard.
  22. Martin Luther King Jr.
    So I should have denounced him? Publicly separated myself from a man who'd been beaten beside me?
  23. James Baldwin
    I didn't say that. But don't act like the only choices were lie or denounce. You could've said nothing.
  24. Martin Luther King Jr.
    Silence would've been seen as rejection.
  25. James Baldwin
    By him, yes. Not by the people reading the book. They wouldn't have known you were silent. They'd have just not seen your name.
  26. Martin Luther King Jr.
    You're asking me to have withheld support from a colleague.
  27. James Baldwin
    I'm saying you chose to support him over the integrity of your own word. That was a choice. Maybe the right one. But it was a choice, and it had consequences.
  28. Martin Luther King Jr.
    You've done the same, James.
  29. James Baldwin
    I have.
  30. Martin Luther King Jr.
    Tell me.
  31. James Baldwin
    Nineteen sixty-two. Friend of mine, another writer, Negro, published a novel. It was bad. Not bad meaning controversial. Bad meaning he couldn't write. Wooden dialogue, cardboard people, message plastered on every page like wallpaper. And it got published because he was the right kind of Negro for that moment, non-threatening, and the white publishers wanted to show they cared.
  32. Martin Luther King Jr.
    What did you do?
  33. James Baldwin
    Sat on a panel with him. The New School. Moderator asked me what I thought of the book. I said it was a valuable contribution to the literature of our moment.
  34. Martin Luther King Jr.
    Was it?
  35. James Baldwin
    No. It was garbage. And I knew if I said that, every white person in that room would go home saying, See, they turn on each other, can't even support their own. And every Negro in that room would say, Baldwin thinks he's better than us.
  36. Martin Luther King Jr.
    So you chose community over criticism.
  37. James Baldwin
    I chose not to be used. That's different. But yes, I lied about the book. And you want to know what happened?
  38. Martin Luther King Jr.
    What happened?
  39. James Baldwin
    He never wrote another one. Because people told him the first one was good, and when the second one didn't sell, he thought it was racism. And maybe it was racism. But it was also that the book was terrible, and nobody'd loved him enough to say so.
  40. Martin Luther King Jr.
    You think you hurt him by protecting him.
  41. James Baldwin
    I know I did. And I hurt every young Negro writer who looked at that book and thought, That's the standard. That's what we're supposed to be doing.
  42. Martin Luther King Jr.
    But James, we were under siege. We are under siege. When you're fighting for your life, you can't afford to fight each other.
  43. James Baldwin
    That's exactly when you have to tell the truth. Because if we don't hold each other to the truth, we become what they say we are. We become performers, putting on the show they want to see.
  44. Martin Luther King Jr.
    There's a difference between performance and strategy. I had to think about the movement, not just my own purity.
  45. James Baldwin
    And what did the movement gain from you lying about a bad book?
  46. Martin Luther King Jr.
    It gained his continued participation. It gained the money he raised. It gained the perception, among white moderates, that we were unified.
  47. James Baldwin
    It gained a lie. Which means it was built, in that moment, on a lie. And you can't build a movement on lies, Martin. You can build a campaign, maybe. But not a movement.
  48. Martin Luther King Jr.
    I think you're being absolutist.
  49. James Baldwin
    I think I'm being accurate.
  50. Martin Luther King Jr.
    Let me ask you something. When you praised your friend's book, did you gain anything from it? Personally?
  51. James Baldwin
    No. I gained nothing. Lost something, probably. Lost some credibility with the few people who knew I was lying.
  52. Martin Luther King Jr.
    So why did you do it?
  53. James Baldwin
    Because I was tired. Because I'd been called an Uncle Tom by the nationalists and a troublemaker by the integrationists and I didn't want to be called a traitor too. Because it was easier.
  54. Martin Luther King Jr.
    That's the most honest thing you've said yet.
  55. James Baldwin
    I'm not proud of it.
  56. Martin Luther King Jr.
    Neither am I. Of my own version, I mean. But I don't know if I'd do it differently.
  57. James Baldwin
    That's the problem.
  58. Martin Luther King Jr.
    What is?
  59. James Baldwin
    That you don't know. Because it means you never decided what matters more. The person or the principle. And you can't lead without knowing that.
  60. Martin Luther King Jr.
    I led, James. Whatever my compromises, I led.
  61. James Baldwin
    You did. But you also taught people that sometimes we praise what we don't believe. And they learned that lesson.
  62. Martin Luther King Jr.
    What would you have had me do? Break with every person whose work fell short?
  63. James Baldwin
    No. I'd have had you stay silent where you couldn't speak truth. Let your silence be honest.
  64. Martin Luther King Jr.
    Silence is interpreted.
  65. James Baldwin
    So is praise. And false praise is interpreted as truth. That's worse.
  66. Martin Luther King Jr.
    I think we're both trying to justify what we did.
  67. James Baldwin
    No. I'm trying to say it cost something. I'm trying to say we paid in coin we didn't have. We paid with other people's trust.
  68. Martin Luther King Jr.
    And if I could go back?
  69. James Baldwin
    What would you do?
  70. Martin Luther King Jr.
    I'd write the foreword. I'd write it because the man earned it in ways that had nothing to do with the book. But I'd write it different. I'd say he was a man of courage, a man of conviction, a man who stood when it cost him. And I'd leave the book itself alone.
  71. James Baldwin
    That would've been honest.
  72. Martin Luther King Jr.
    Would you have done differently? With your friend?
  73. James Baldwin
    I'd have told him the truth in private. Before the panel. I'd have said, This isn't your best work, and you can do better. And then at the panel, I'd have said I loved him and let the book speak for itself.
  74. Martin Luther King Jr.
    Think he'd have listened?
  75. James Baldwin
    No. But I'd have loved him enough to try.
  76. Martin Luther King Jr.
    That's all any of us can do, I suppose. Try to love each other enough to risk the truth.
  77. James Baldwin
    Yes. Even when the truth costs us something.
  78. Martin Luther King Jr.
    Especially then.