The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings Page 13

  MR. SCHEUER. Would you like to invite her to testify with you?

  MR. BALDWIN. Yes.

  I am much in favor of the proposed legislation. I have to be honest with you and say that it occurs to me that the principal problem one faces in teaching Negroes their culture is that we will find that impossible to do without teaching American history, in a sense, then, for the first time. The burden under which the Negro child operates in this country, as your previous witnesses have indicated, is that he has no sense of identity.

  It occurs to me that this involves a great national waste on the part of the morale of the child who is black. It appears to me that it is a great national waste not only for a Negro child but for any child growing up in this country. Anyone who is black is taught, as my generation was taught, that Negroes are not a civilization or culture, and that we came out of the jungle and were saved by the missionary.

  Not only is this something awful to me, which eventually puts me on the street corner, but it’s awful to everyone. You cannot educate a child if you first destroy his morale. That is why they leave school. You cannot educate him if he sees what is happening to his fathers, if he sees Ph.D.’s toting garbage.

  If he sees in fact on the one hand no past and really no present and certainly no future, then you have created what the American public likes to think of, in the younger generation, as the nigger we invent and the nigger they invent. What has happened is that you destroy the child from the cradle.

  MR. SCHEUER. It is the institutionalization of the prophecy.

  MR. BALDWIN. If the cat cannot join a union no matter how many pennies he saves, he will still be at the bottom of the barrel. There is really nothing you can do with him. By and by, he will not listen to you and he will not listen to me. I am not a witness nor a hope. I am proof of what the country does to you if you are black. That is true even if I am Jackie Robinson.

  MR. SCHEUER. Do you think that this legislation in a minor way—none of us suggest that it is a great panacea—might bring together the talent that would produce a program to open up the doors of our education system, of our textbooks, of our media, to portray the role of the Negro in American life, and in world affairs, so that the Negro would have an enhanced self-image and so that the white child would have a true sense of Negro contributions?

  MR. BALDWIN. That is the hope of the proposed bill. But we would be deluding ourselves if we did not understand that the particular history of my forefathers in this country can change the climate in this country. That climate is not one of flattery.

  MR. SCHEUER. I think the Anti-Riot Commission Report says that as it is, as you have been doing for many years.

  MR. BALDWIN. You have to face the fact that in the textbook industry—the key word there is “industry”—McGraw-Hill is not yet about to destroy all its present textbooks and create new ones, because they will not be bought by the colleges and by the schools, at least not yet in St. Louis, or in Maryland, or New Orleans, or for that matter in New York. It is, after all, a profit-motive industry.

  One cannot expect a business to put itself out of business under altruistic motives. One has got to find some way, then, it would seem to me, to indicate to the textbook industry, which is a great stumbling block here, that would indicate to them that it is in their self-interest.

  For example, the terrifying thing in the minds of the public was Malcolm X. One of the reasons you got Malcolm X was because when he was quite young and wanted to become a lawyer, his teacher advised him to do something that a colored person could do, like become a carpenter.

  Only the child, or the brother or sister or the mother of that child, knows what happens to that child’s morale at that time. This is ingrained in the American mythology. It will not be tomorrow that it is uprooted. We have to begin.

  We are beginning late, I must say, but any beginning is better than none. But I don’t think we should pretend that it is going to be easy.

  MR. SCHEUER. Can you give us any recommendations of yours as to how this proposal of ours can be improved and how it can be refined and how it can be given a clearer direction? Can you give us any insights as to how we can do the job better?

  MR. BALDWIN. If I were you and sitting where you are sitting, there are some people I would get in touch with. I would get in touch with Sterling Brown out of the University of Washington; I would talk to John [Hope] Franklin. I am not in agreement with Mr. [Roy] Innis entirely about this being an all-black commission. I would also talk to William Styron, but I would talk to people like Sterling Brown.

  MR. SCHEUER. Did you say you were not in agreement that it should be all Negro?

  MR. BALDWIN. I think it would be self-defeating. As I read it, it would be an attempt to teach American history. I am a little bit hard-bitten about white liberals.

  MR. SCHEUER. Is that a pejorative phrase when you use it?

  MR. BALDWIN. It can be. I don’t trust people who think of themselves as liberals. I do trust some white people, like Bill [Styron], he is not a Negro. He is a Deep Southern cat who has paid his dues and he has been through the fire and he knows what it is about. I trust him more than Max Lesher. What I am saying is that I don’t trust missionaries.

  I don’t want anybody working with me because they are doing something for me. What I want them to do is to work in their own communities. I want you to tell your brothers and your sisters and your wife and your children what it is all about. Don’t tell me, because I know already. You see what I mean?

  You have the power. But to answer you and go back to your question, I think one of the stumbling blocks is that the nature of the black experience in this country does indicate something about the total American history which frightens Americans. It brings up all those things you have talked about and want to talk about.

  It brings up the real history of the country—the history of our relationships with Mexicans and slaves. All these points contradict the myth of American history. It attacks the American identity in a sense.

  Shirley Temple would be a different person if she were black.

  MR. SCHEUER. She probably would be a member of Congress.

  MR. BALDWIN. We can’t prove that by the members of Congress. You see what I mean. Someone like Sterling Brown is an old poet and an old blues singer. He knows more than, say, a man my age. He can tell you things which I cannot, about you and me. It is a level of experience about which Ray Charles sings and of which all Americans are still terrified.

  If we are going to build a multiracial society, which is our only hope, then one has got to accept that I have learned a lot from you, and a lot of it is bitter, but you have a lot to learn from me, and a lot of that will be bitter. That bitterness is our only hope. That is the only way we get past it. Am I making sense to you?

  MR. SCHEUER. Absolutely.

  Congressman Gus Hawkins of California.

  MR. HAWKINS. I must apologize for being called out of the room, Mr. Baldwin.

  I certainly think that you have offered some very wonderful suggestions and some good comments. I particularly enjoyed what I considered to be the point that you made that the objective of such a commission would be to teach American history, making it plain and clear that the history of the black man in America is that part of American history. There is not reason to separate it.

  You feel that competent persons, both black and white, should be engaged in doing this?

  MR. BALDWIN. It is our common history. My history is also yours.

  MR. HAWKINS. I certainly agree with you, Mr. Baldwin. I certainly appreciate this opportunity that you have afforded us.

  MR. SCHEUER. Congressman [William] Hathaway of Maine.

  MR. HATHAWAY. Mr. Baldwin, I would take it that you would agree that perhaps we should expand the scope of the bill to cover not only the history of the culture but also the contemporary heroes.

  MR. BALDWIN. Yes, but you must understand that, speaking as black Americans, my heroes have always been [seen] from the point of
view of white Americans as bad niggers. Cassius Clay is one of my heroes but not one of yours.

  I on the other hand am not suggesting that this commission should establish a hall of fame for great Negroes at all. What I am trying to suggest is that you recognize the role that my heroes—as distinguished from yours—have played in American life and the reasons why all my heroes came to such bloody ends.

  From my point of view, Muhammad Ali Clay, without discussing his affiliations or what I may think of him, has been hanged by the public as a bad nigger. He is going to be an example to every other Negro man. Those are my heroes. Those are not the heroes of the American public. You will find yourself up against that fact before many days have passed.

  Do you see what I mean? As long as my heroes are not yours, then the bitterness in the ghetto increases hour by hour and grows more and more dangerous and does not only blow up the ghetto but blows up the cities.

  When I came back from New York a few weeks ago, I came back during the garbage strike, when all New York looked just like Harlem.

  MR. SCHEUER. It looked just like South Bronx, the district I represent, and I was happy to see the rest of the city have what the residents of Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant put up with 365 days of the year. It was a salutary experience.

  MR. BALDWIN. When you unleash a plague, it covers the entire city and nation. What has been happening to me all of these years is now beginning to happen to all of you, and this was inevitable. What we are involved with here is an attempt to have ourselves, and we need each other for that.

  My history, though, contains the truth about America. It is going to be hard to teach it.

  MR. HATHAWAY. Perhaps we should tell more of the truth about our heroes, such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, who are built up in history books almost as myths. We know that they had frailties. We know that they made a lot of mistakes. Those mistakes are never built up, so that the white man has the impression immediately that his heroes are almost gods.

  MR. BALDWIN. I don’t think that any kid believes any of those legends about George Washington and his cherry tree—“I cannot tell a lie” and all that nonsense.

  MR. HATHAWAY. I think at certain stages they do. After a while they get to believe that it is not true.

  MR. BALDWIN. I never did.

  This is fine. I think it does a disservice to a child to tell him things which are not true. Children cannot really be fooled. For example, and I will be very brief, you remember that several years ago the Birmingham church school was bombed and there were four girls killed in there. They were not killed by some madman, but by a mad society, which is not only located in Birmingham. At that time some of us threw together an ad hoc committee to prevent celebrations on Christmas Day. We had lost the right as a Christian nation to celebrate the birth of Christ. I discovered during this that Santa Claus is not needed by children, but by grown-ups. People say we couldn’t do that because the children would be so upset. The fact is that it wasn’t true; what they really meant was that they would be upset.

  We give them those legends and they try to survive them, but no kid has ever believed anything written about George Washington. Anyway, even if they did, by the time they are seventeen they have got to revise their whole estimate of reality around the fact of human beings, not legends.

  I think the sooner one learns the truth, the better. Do I make myself clear?

  MR. HATHAWAY. I am just wondering whether I agree with you. Perhaps we just need a more realistic appraisal of what our heroes should be.

  MR. BALDWIN. Anyway, leaving aside the hypothetical matters, the black kid in the ghetto doesn’t believe in these heroes for a moment. You begin the process of the breakdown of communication virtually from the cradle.

  I really didn’t believe at the time I was seven the Pledge of Allegiance, and no black boy I knew did, either. For very good reasons, too. I didn’t believe it, in effect, because the country didn’t believe it. I didn’t believe it because you didn’t believe it. If you had believed it, I would have been in a different place. My father would have been a very different man. You didn’t believe it, so I didn’t. You can’t fool a kid. You still don’t believe it, and so they don’t, and they won’t believe it until you do. You have to prove that you do.

  MR. HATHAWAY. By action?

  MR. BALDWIN. Yes. Let me get a job, allow me the right to protect my women, my house, my children. That is all the Negro wants: his autonomy. Nobody hates you. The time is far gone for that. I simply want to live my life.

  I suggest, too, that the kids all up and down this country in the streets of all our cities are coming to ruin and are going on the needle. They are coming to nothing. This is a waste no country can afford.

  I am the flesh of your flesh and bone of your bone; I have been here as long as you have been here—longer—I paid for it as much as you have. It is my country, too. Do recognize that that is the whole question. My history and culture has got to be taught. It is yours.

  MR. HATHAWAY. Do you think that there is some hope that if the culture is brought back to white America that the black America has a better chance?

  MR. BALDWIN. Yes. This would involve a change in your institutions. It is not just a matter of passing a bill. The Christian church in this country is a very popular institution. But this has always been a racist institution, and we take this as immoral.

  Once I become a part of that church, that institution is a different institution. It is not a matter of letting me into it; it has to change. This is true for all American institutions—including schools and the textbook industry.

  You are to accept the fact that I am the darker brother, and the key word there is “brother.” Whereas you from Europe came here voluntarily, I was kidnapped, and my history was destroyed here. For your purposes, this has to be faced. I am not trying to be bitter or anything. This is the way it is.

  MR. SCHEUER. I would like to emphasize that we are in entire accord with you in that we want the institutions to change. We want the textbook industry to change; we want the teaching industry to change. We want the radio and television and press industry to change, and we hope that this commission could start to do the hard intellectual work and play the leadership role to induce change.

  This commission, if it is anything, will be a change effort. We would like to have your views on how it can best be achieved to perfect the design of this commission so that it will open up doors.

  MR. BALDWIN. I am not gifted in this area. Let me offer a suggestion. You can do whatever you like with it. We are talking about mass media. One is up against this: There is a very successful movie going around which I saw a few days ago in Hollywood. It is called Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. This movie is about an interracial marriage, I suppose. Sidney Poitier plays a very beautiful and modest role. That is all he ever plays. This is the mass media for you.

  Now, if one is going to deal with the mass media, you have to be aware that you are reaching two publics: the white people in this country and abroad; I talked to some people in London who adored it and think it is true. But, of course, when I watch it, some cat in the ghetto is watching it; it may do great things for your morale, but it does terrible things to him. He recognizes that the movie is a cop-out. Mr. Poitier is not an ordinary citizen. It obviously would be a different movie if he were able to play a real man.

  I am not overstating my case; the movie does say that in order for me to marry this particular white chick, I have to be what he is in the movie. Well, that is not so of any white person, he can marry whomever he wants to marry. I am trying to say that the structure of the mass media is such that I think you ought to be aware that there would be a tremendous resistance.

  You will hear what I have heard for years. “It is great and powerful, but it is not for our readers.” Or—“It is a risky picture and we can’t do it.” The mass media is mainly a form of escape, and someone said many, many years ago that no white person is going to make his escape personality
black, especially in this country. I don’t think we should be deluded about that.

  MR. SCHEUER. Here exactly is that kind of a challenge that we hope the commission will face squarely.

  MR. BALDWIN. We are terribly penalized in this country, every single one of us, famous and obscure. It is like being what America still considers one of your niggers. This commission has to begin to break down that terrifying heritage, which, after all, destroys the white child, too.

  MR. SCHEUER. That was the point I was trying to make with Mr. Innis before you came. The 90-percent white majority has as much or more of an interest in this purification process, because they are deprived by not knowing of Negro history and culture.

  MR. BALDWIN. They are frightened. I don’t hate white people; I don’t have to. I am not afraid of you. You face a Southern deputy, and he does hate you—because he is scared to death of you. He is the one who is in trouble, and that is the man you have to liberate.

  MR. SCHEUER. We can’t thank you enough for coming to see us. You certainly deserve the door prize for having come the longest distance. We are grateful, and we benefited enormously by your views.

  MRS. SHABAZZ. I am in complete accord with this bill and in teaching black history in the schools. Some of the things I have heard I have disagreed with, and some I have agreed with. I think primarily the problem is one of getting black history in the schools. If it is wanted by blacks and whites, I think this would solve some of the problems, if cooperation is wanted.

  This is needed to curb the things that are going on and some terrible things that will continue to go on. I think a lot of the hysteria has been created primarily by whites, who basically have not understood blacks, who have not treated them as human beings.