No Name in the Street

Baldwin is still working on the screenplay about Malcolm X when he learns about Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination (he has stopped working with the Hollywood studios due to their conflicting visions about Malcolm X’s story). At King’s funeral, Baldwin is in emotional distress, mourning his friends who died too soon and thinking of their families.

Baldwin hosts a gathering organized by the Black Panthers to raise money for Huey P. Newton’s legal defense. Baldwin describes the founding principles of the Black Panther Party, explaining that it was a response to the Black community’s need for self-defense against police violence. Black Panthers emphasized that “black people need protection against the police” and stressed their right to defend themselves (158). Mainstream society saw the Black Panthers as disruptive figures. Baldwin criticizes white people’s inability to realize the racism of the legal system. White Americans insist on the myth that “the police are honorable, and the courts are just” (160). For Baldwin, every aspect of American culture reinforces this delusion. He notes that within the “ghetto” structure, police violence is dominant and resembles criminal harassment. Ultimately, the “ghetto” is deliberately targeted and economically exploited by the system. The police’s goal is only to oppress the Black people of the “ghetto.”

Baldwin criticizes northerners’ reaction to the Black Panthers and their tolerance of police brutality against them. He notes that the emergence of the Black Panther party was as inevitable as that of the early civil rights movement in the South. In the 1970s, white America still could not acknowledge the truth of Black people’s struggles, and their willful ignorance kept endangering Black lives. The Black Panthers sought to protect and liberate Black communities, especially youth. They became targets because they proclaimed their manhood and offered a new energy within the Black community. Baldwin argues that American politicians like Nixon have learned nothing from history.

Baldwin recalls meeting Huey P. Newton and Eldridge Cleaver in 1967. Baldwin senses Cleaver disapproves of him due to his sexual identity and oddness, feeling a “constraint” between them. He stresses that the artist and the revolutionary need each other but can also be at odds with one another and with their community. For Baldwin, Huey P. Newton’s character is mysterious, but they both believe in an “indigenous socialism” that would address the needs of the American people. Baldwin stresses the need for social change but recognizes the reluctance of American society to change. The persecution of the Black Panthers reveals the system’s attempts to obscure the reality of “the American black situation” (177). American leaders have no desire to change the social order, therefore Black people cannot be free. Despite that fact, Black people can carry on even if the path remains unclear.

Baldwin analyzes the era’s “flower children,” the rebellious white youth. They realized the limited role that American society prepared for them and were “tormented by the hope of love” (183). However, they could not connect with the Black community because they lacked maturity. Black people’s liberation depends on the repudiation of the white imagination. When Black people are no longer manipulated by white fantasies, they can affirm their power.  

Baldwin declares he is proud to be Black and notes that the term “African American” reveals the tension between the African and European history. African American people can no longer defend Western civilization and American society, seeing that its insistence on hatred will lead to destruction. Instead, they hope to transform it with a “passionate love.”