Existing comment:
Civil Rights and Citizen Artists
Speaking for Justice:
James Baldwin
Writer James Baldwin was the leading literary voice of the civil rights movement. TIME magazine said no one else “expresses with such poignancy and abrasiveness the dark realities of the racial ferment in North and South.”
In May of 1963, Baldwin publicly criticized President Kennedy’s response to racial violence in Alabama. Later that month, Attorney General Robert Kennedy invited Baldwin to convene a meeting of Black leaders to discuss civil rights issues. The meeting was contentious but it set the stage for President Kennedy’s most important speech on civil rights and his introduction of civil rights legislation just days later. |