I remember what it was...to be young, very young. When everything, touching and tasting-everything- was so new, and even suffering was wonderful beca… - James Baldwin

To tell you the truth, the results of the civil rights movement to me has nothing to do with civil rights. (I'm talking with hindsight. I might not have said this two years ago.) The one thing it revealed to me was a profound nobility, a real nobility on the part of a whole lot of black people, old and young. There is no other word for it. It was a passionate example. It was doomed to political failure, but that doesn't make any difference. The example will never, never die. And on another level, it exposed white people. Some of them understood it and some of them didn't. Some of them really understood what it meant to have all those kids cattleprodded and hosed and beaten and murdered and chained and castrated. The moral image of a cattleprod against a woman's breast or against a man's testicles. It exposed some things for some people and on the other hand most of the people hid. They did not want to see it and don't see it until today. That's how we have Nixon in the White House and we see this hood Agnew on his way to jail. And then, once again, to keep the nigger in his place, they called it law and order. They brought into office law and order, but I call it the Fourth Reich. I must say, I claim for the black people of America the example of nobility which I have never seen before and no one in this century has seen before. Malcolm was noble. Martin was noble. Medgar was noble and those kids were noble and it exposed an entire country, it exposed an entire civilization. Now we have to take it from there. (1973)

The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.

"Many have given up. They stay home and watch the TV screen, living on the earnings of their parents, cousins, bothers, or uncles, and only leave the house to go to the movies or to the nearest bar. "How're you making it?" on may ask, running into them along the block, or in the bar. "Oh, I'm TV-ing it"; with the saddest, sweetest, most shamefaced of smiles, and from a great distance. This distance one is compelled to respect; anyone who has traveled so far will not easily be dragged again into the world. There are further retreats, of course, than the TV screen or the bar. There are those who are simply sitting on their stoops, "stoned," animated for a moment only, and hideously, by the approach of someone who may lend them the money for a "fix." Or by the approach of someone from whom they can purchase it, one of the shrewd ones, on the way to prison or just coming out."