Jr.×Baldwin

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   Welcome back to Reborn Radio. Up next on THE TRIAL: Martin Luther King Jr. and James Baldwin, on On the bad habit they trained out of themselves, and how long it took.
2. 00:11
   Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

   Brother Baldwin, I confess I spent years training myself out of anger. Public anger. The kind that shows.
3. 00:18
   James Baldwinshare moment

   Yes. I know that training. I watched you do it.
4. 00:21
   Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

   You watched me?
5. 00:22
   James Baldwinshare moment

   Of course. We all watched you. That control was the point, wasn't it? That you could stand before a mob and never let them see you flinch.
6. 00:29
   Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

   It was necessary. A Negro in my position—any position of leadership—could not afford to appear enraged, no matter the provocation. The white moderate would call it threatening. The press would call it dangerous. And the cause would suffer.
7. 00:43
   James Baldwinshare moment

   The cause. Yes. We were always doing things for the cause.
8. 00:46
   Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

   You sound skeptical.
9. 00:48
   James Baldwinshare moment

   I sound tired. There's a difference. I spent years, Martin, teaching myself not to stammer. You remember I stammered as a boy?
10. 00:56
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    I didn't know that.
11. 00:57
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Terribly. Especially when I was afraid, which was often. My stepfather beat it into me, in a sense. The fear. And then I had to beat the stammer out. Took me until I was fourteen, fifteen. I learned to pause instead. To let the silence do some of the work.
12. 01:14
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    Those pauses became part of your power as a speaker.
13. 01:17
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Maybe. But they started as shame. As a colored boy trying not to show he was terrified.
14. 01:23
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    I understand that more than you might think. My father was a preacher, as you know. Strong-willed. He ruled his house and his pulpit with absolute certainty. I learned early that doubt was a luxury I couldn't afford if I wanted to lead.
15. 01:36
    James Baldwinshare moment

    But you had doubt.
16. 01:37
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    Of course I had doubt. I had despair. After Birmingham, after Selma, after the children were murdered in that church—you think I slept soundly? You think I didn't weep?
17. 01:48
    James Baldwinshare moment

    I never thought that.
18. 01:49
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    But I couldn't weep in public. I couldn't rage in public. I had to stand before the cameras and speak of hope and redemption and the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice. Even when I wasn't certain it would bend at all.
19. 02:02
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Even when you knew white people were listening for any excuse to dismiss you.
20. 02:06
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    Especially then.
21. 02:07
    James Baldwinshare moment

    That's the training you mean. The performance.
22. 02:10
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    I wouldn't call it performance, James. I believed what I said. Every word. But yes, I had to shape how I said it. I had to control the instrument. My voice, my body, my face. It all had to project calm, even dignity. Righteous indignation, yes—but never raw fury.
23. 02:28
    James Baldwinshare moment

    It took me longer to learn that trick. Or maybe I never fully learned it.
24. 02:33
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    You had your own way.
25. 02:34
    James Baldwinshare moment

    I had rage enough to burn down the country, Martin. I still do. But somewhere in my twenties I realized that if I let it all out, if I just screamed the way I wanted to scream, they'd lock me up or ignore me or call me mad. So I learned to write it instead. To put the fire on the page where they had to sit with it.
26. 02:53
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    Your essays burned anyway.
27. 02:54
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Yes, but they couldn't dismiss them as easily. The trick was—the bad habit I had to break—I used to apologize. Constantly. For taking up space, for disagreeing, for existing.
28. 03:06
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    You?
29. 03:06
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Oh yes. You'd be surprised. Little Jimmy Baldwin from Harlem, stepfather calling him ugly, teachers calling him bright but difficult. I apologized for breathing too loud. I made myself small. And then I got to Paris and I realized I'd been doing it my whole life.
30. 03:23
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    How long did it take you to stop?
31. 03:24
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Years. Maybe ten years. Maybe I'm still learning. I had to teach myself that my anger was legitimate. That I didn't need to soften it for white comfort. That when I named the thing—and I always try to name the thing on the first try—I didn't owe anyone an apology for the naming.
32. 03:42
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    But you're more free than I was. You could say things I couldn't say.
33. 03:46
    James Baldwinshare moment

    That's true. I wasn't trying to build a coalition. I wasn't trying to get Lyndon Johnson on the phone. I could tell white people exactly what I thought of them.
34. 03:55
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    And it cost you.
35. 03:56
    James Baldwinshare moment

    And it cost me. But your way cost you too, Martin. Don't pretend it didn't.
36. 04:01
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    I never said it didn't cost me. I'm saying it had to be done. The habit I broke—or tried to break—was bitterness. Personal bitterness. I couldn't afford to nurse private grievances when there was so much work to do.
37. 04:14
    James Baldwinshare moment

    How long did that take?
38. 04:16
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    I'm not sure I ever finished. I was still working on it the day I died.
39. 04:19
    James Baldwinshare moment

    That's honest.
40. 04:20
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    It's the truth. Every time I got close—every time I thought I'd mastered my own resentments—something would happen. Another betrayal, another compromise, another white liberal telling me to slow down. And I'd have to fight it all over again.
41. 04:35
    James Baldwinshare moment

    The ones telling you to slow down. They made you angrier than the segregationists, didn't they?
42. 04:40
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    Sometimes, yes. Because they thought they were my friends. They thought their moderation was wisdom.
43. 04:46
    James Baldwinshare moment

    You wrote about that. The white moderate. More devoted to order than to justice.
44. 04:51
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    From the Birmingham jail. Yes. That letter poured out of me because I'd been swallowing that anger for so long. The habit I was trying to break was accommodation. Smiling when I wanted to shout. Thanking people who gave me crumbs and called it progress.
45. 05:06
    James Baldwinshare moment

    And did you break it?
46. 05:08
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    Partially. By the end—Chicago, the Poor People's Campaign—I was done accommodating. I was ready to call the whole system into question. But the early training never left me entirely. I still reached for the measured phrase, the biblical cadence. I couldn't help it.
47. 05:24
    James Baldwinshare moment

    That cadence is part of who you are.
48. 05:26
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    Maybe. But sometimes I wonder what I might have said if I'd let myself speak without it. If I'd just stood up and cursed the way I wanted to curse.
49. 05:35
    James Baldwinshare moment

    You'd have been dismissed in a week. You know that.
50. 05:38
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    I know. That's why I didn't do it. That's the tragedy of the training, James. It works. It makes you effective. But it also makes you smaller than your anger.
51. 05:47
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Smaller than your humanity.
52. 05:48
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    Yes.
53. 05:49
    James Baldwinshare moment

    I think that's what took so long for both of us. We had to learn that our anger was part of our humanity. Not something to be ashamed of or trained away, but something to be shaped. Used.
54. 06:00
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    You shaped it into your writing.
55. 06:02
    James Baldwinshare moment

    And you shaped it into a movement. But we both paid for the shaping. We both had to break the habit of thinking our feelings were the problem, when the problem was what made us feel that way.
56. 06:13
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    How long did it take you?
57. 06:14
    James Baldwinshare moment

    The stammering? A few years. The apologizing? Most of my life. The belief that I didn't deserve to take up space? I'm still working on that one.
58. 06:23
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    And for me, the anger took decades. The bitterness, I'm still not sure. But the hardest habit to break was hope.
59. 06:30
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Hope?
60. 06:31
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    The naive kind. The kind that expected white America to do the right thing once we appealed to their conscience. That took the longest to unlearn. And I'm not sure I ever fully did.
61. 06:42
    James Baldwinshare moment

    No. You didn't. But maybe that's not a bad thing.
62. 06:45
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    Maybe not. But it hurt.
63. 06:46
    James Baldwinshare moment

    Everything hurt. That's what they don't tell you about the training. That breaking a bad habit doesn't stop the pain. It just teaches you a different way to carry it.