James Baldwin Celebrate’s the Flesh Rare Footage of London’s Black Power Movement

James Baldwin offers a poetic celebration of & critical analysis of the Life & Death Struggle of Black Social Life as he Narrates its Sojourn from its Natal Well-Spring Flowing in the Fibers of the Flesh & then through the Sensorium of Perception, & Finally finding its Repositories in the very ‘Social Fabric’ of political communities throughout the African Diaspora.

Black Liberation in Media Res et Contentio

 

Without succumbing to the temptation of romantic absolutism, Baldwin provides a bit of realism’s real talk, notably, in typical Balwin-esque bravado, Jimmy B. offers a biting – and ‘severe,’ as he puts it himself – critique of White-Europeans’ Cult of Asceticism that’s been cultivated & propagated by History’s (Tragic) Corruption of the Christian Faith.
Finally, Baldwin ends with a Zealous (Perhaps Life-Blistering) Ode to Human Potential. By means of a Life-Affirming Crescendo James Baldwin Pays Testament to the Undying & Eternal Pulse of Humanity that Beats Courses in the Veins and Beats in the Heart the Black Liberation Struggle for Freedom.

 

—-Note: (‘Social Fabric’ is marked here because of the specificity of its meaning for Baldwin in being a term the great American novelist & activist has spoken publicly upon & written about, at great lengths no less, in his essays & expositional works of non-fiction).

Quote to Note: Living in the Twilight of Oppression’s Night viz. SCOTUS Justice William O. Douglass

Old White Men in Smoke Filled Rooms

 Old White Men in Smoke Filled Rooms

As Nightfall does not come all once, neither does oppression. In both instances there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of darkness.

- U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
The Douglas Letters : Selections from the Private Papers of Justice William O. Douglas (1987), edited by Melvin I. Urofsky and Philip E. Urofsky, p. 16.

 

Nightfall of Oppression and Opportunity

 

Old White Men in Smoke Filled Rooms