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Eulogy delivered at James Baldwin’s funeral. Published in The New York Times, December 20, 1987, Sunday, Late City Final Edition Section 7; Page 29, Column 2; Book Review Desk.
Volume 10’s From the Field section consists of provocations and talking points from roundtable discussions on the Dick Fontaine and Pat Hartley film I Heard It Through the Grapevine (1982) hosted by James Baldwin Review at three different conferences—the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in Denver in 2023; the Modern Language Association’s 2024 conference in Philadelphia; and the American Literature Association’s 2024 conference in Chicago. These roundtables provided stimulating public conversation, bringing together scholars to provide new takes on this extraordinary but little-known film. The panelists—Simon Abramowitsch (Chabot College), Douglas Field (University of Manchester), Monika Gehlawat (University of Southern Mississippi), Melanie Hill (Rutgers University), Josslyn J. Luckett (NYU), D. Quentin Miller (Suffolk University), Jared O’Connor (University of Illinois at Chicago), Hayley O’Malley (Rice University), Robert Reid-Pharr (NYU), Karen Thorsen (independent filmmaker), Kenneth Stuckey (Bentley University)—have each agreed to share here their opening remarks from these conferences in hopes of furthering discussion on this vital film.
James Baldwin Review is delighted to present a special section dedicated to chronicling and demonstrating Baldwin’s direct involvement in the civil rights movement. On tours for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1962–63, Baldwin spoke at dozens of forums. We have transcribed three of his major appearances on May 7, 1963: a speech before a packed gathering of thousands of students at the University of California at Berkeley; a radio interview with John Leonard and Elsa Knight Thompson; and an evening speech before the sold-out San Francisco Masonic Temple. Ed Pavlić provides an introduction tracing some of Baldwin’s work for CORE in new detail. These details suggest that Baldwin’s activism enriched his life and work in contrast to the prevailing idea that these engagements threatened and diminished his art.
This conversation was first broadcast on KPFA (Berkeley, CA) on June 6, 1963. Original transcription available online: https://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-28-8s4jm23q52. The transcription below has been lightly edited for clarity and prepared by Ed Pavlić and Justin A. Joyce. Vocal emphasis has been captured with italics. Significant pauses, interruptions, or non-word interjections have been captured in editorial brackets.