After King Jr.’s death, Baldwin wrote, “The tangible things that happened to me – and to Blacks in America – during that whole terrible time was the realization that our destinies are in our hands, Black hands, and no one else’s.”

He said the story we tell about what the country is, and thus who we are, shapes the world we make going forward. called “a poisonous fog of lies.” It is what Dubois called “lies agreed upon.” Decades ago, Dubois said what is true today: “We have too often a deliberate attempt to change the facts of history so that the story will make pleasant reading for White Americans.”īaldwin proposed various solutions, writing, “A moral vision requires a confrontation with history, with slavery, and the ongoing consequences of the After Times, to establish the ground upon which to imagine the country anew.” The American history we face is not a history of racial justice progress, but what Baldwin calls “the big lie” and the betrayal of history by white supremacy. Du Bois, when he says our task of “beginning again” is “a hope, not hopeless, but unhopeful.”īaldwin tells of history and memory between what actually happened, and the kinds of stories we tell about what happened, and for what purpose. quotes American sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-African civil rights activist, W.E.B. We are again living in the “After Times” now! This book is not a hopeful story of change this is a sobering book. Yet, he writes that each effort was followed by White backlash Baldwin calls the “After Times.” He gives hopeful examples of past Black rights gained, such as the civil rights laws during Reconstruction after the Civil War, and during the Black Power movement of the 1960s. Glaude’s title of “Begin Again” calls us to renewed action for racial justice. Photo courtesy of Thomas Hawk via Flickr. A PHOTO OF an artist’s depiction of acclaimed writer, James Baldwin, taken on Sept.

Eddie glaude begin again review