doing better

This picture is NOT CUTE

ok ok ok. there is a lot of misinformation going around about what exactly happened, so let me be clear:

On this day, 2 August 1924, James Baldwin, renowned gay Black author and social critic was born in Harlem, New York City. Frustrated with endemic racism in the United States, he moved to France where he spent most of his life. However, he did return to the US during the civil rights movement and played an active role in fighting racism, despite the official movement's homophobia, encouraging civil disobedience and taking part in the March on Washington in 1963 and the Selma march in 1965. Baldwin believed racism to be a central tool of US capitalism, telling journalist Joe Walker: "Racism is crucial to the system to keep Black and whites at a division so both were and are a source of cheap labour… The price of any real socialism here [in the US] is the eradication of what we call the race problem." In 1968 Baldwin also pledged to refuse to pay tax in protest against the Vietnam war. For these "subversive" activities, Baldwin was subjected to illegal surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who collated 1,884 pages of documents on him. This collection of writings by Angela Davis begins with the letter sent to her by Baldwin: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/if-they-come-in-the-morning-angela-davis