Sam Jordison in The Guardian:
Today James Baldwin is most frequently encountered as a “trailblazer of the civil rights movement”; a magnificent prophet who declared that “ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have”. His contemporary relevance is so obvious it hardly needs to be stated – although it’s always good to be reminded. To watch him in the recent documentary I Am Not Your Negro is exhilarating, showing just what an unstoppable moral and intellectual force he was. It’s not just that it’s hard to disagree with him; it’s impossible to argue with him. Representatives of the old order charge towards his machine-gun rhetoric like sword-waving cavalrymen and they are mown down.
He was politely devastating when Professor Paul Weiss tried to tell him on the Dick Cavett TV chatshow that he shouldn’t be so concerned about “colour”, when his life has been threatened, and his friends have been killed, precisely because of colour. Meanwhile, the footage of Baldwin shredding the rightwing commentator William F Buckley at the Cambridge Union is one of the most impressive rhetorical performances of the modern age. “It is a terrible thing for an entire people to surrender to the notion that one ninth of its population is beneath them,” he said toward the end of his speech. “Until the moment comes when we, the Americans, are able to accept the fact that my ancestors are both black and white, that on that continent we are trying to forge a new identity, that we need each other, that I am not a ward of America, I am not an object of missionary charity, I am one of the people who built the country – until this moment comes there is scarcely any hope for the American dream.” At his conclusion, the room erupted in a standing ovation. Baldwin’s words were forged in injustice and tragedy, making his delivery all the more remarkable. It feels impossible to imagine anyone who could ever take him on.
More here.