Baldwin did not just say that the myths distort history or that we should rethink the past. He went far beyond that. “Nothing whatever” is an absolute. Baldwin said that the myths were utterly wrong.
Making this argument, Baldwin gave his audience a new way to think about white supremacy and African-American history. He did not speak for a policy; instead, he smashed myths. His only weapons were common sense and powerful language. His claims seem self-evident once he explained them. Yet, Baldwin was right that we too often refuse to face obvious truths.
While other African-American leaders of the 1960s engaged in social activism, Baldwin undertook to make America recognize realities that myths had buried. He attacked two myths. The Mayflower Pilgrims soon became a symbol of white America’s greatness. Slavery was shoved into history’s background. These myths created a vision of America, a vision that Baldwin shattered like glass.
No, the Mayflower itself was no myth. Neither was slavery. What Baldwin meant is that American history twists them: the Pilgrims were desperate refugees, but myth turned them into triumphant heroes. Slavery was not, as history often teaches, an afterthought of American society. It was, Baldwin said, basic to early America’s economic triumphs.
Mayflower Myths
Descendants of the Mayflower’s Pilgrims can join a club that, by reputation, includes New England’s blue bloods. “Our members," the Mayflower Society says, “have formed lifelong bonds together while honoring the sacred legacy of our ancestors.” American history often teaches that the early settlers were heroes. We know, of course, that they were white heroes. That is so obvious that it goes unsaid. Baldwin explained:
“The people who settled the country, the people who came here, came here for one reason – no matter how disguised – they came here because they thought it would be better here than where they were. That’s why they came, and that’s the only reason that they came.”Once he said that, it was just common sense. Nobody risks a sea voyage to go to an unsettled nation with an uncertain future because everything was going well at home. We knew that, did we not? And Baldwin’s inescapable corollary is that the Mayflower’s Pilgrims had struggled in England:
“Anybody who was making it in England did not get on the Mayflower. [Laughter and applause.] This is important. It is important that one begin to recognize this because part of the dilemma of this country is that it has managed to believe the myths it has created about its own past.”As Baldwin pointed out, the English settlers succeeded because they massacred Massachusetts’s native people:
“We did several things in order to conquer the country. There was, at the point we reached these shores, a group of people who had never heard of machines, or as far as I know, of money, and we promptly eliminated them. We killed them. I’m talking about the Indians.”So, that was the first myth. (As Nick Bryant points out, the Pilgrims set up an active trade to export Native American slaves and import African slaves. Is that horror the “scared legacy of our ancestors” of which the Mayflower Society boasts?) Having summarily dispatched the myth of the noble Pilgrims, Baldwin moved on to the myths that underestimated African slavery.
Myths about Slavery
Instead of dwelling on the evils of slavery – which he took as obvious – Baldwin pointed out that slavery is inherently an economic and political tool. America’s economic triumphs only occurred, he said, because Africans were kidnapped and brought to the New World to perform unpaid labor. It was on the backs of their work, he reminded his audience, that the American economy came to flourish:
“Now slavery, like murder, is one of the oldest human institutions. So we cannot quarrel about the fact of slavery; that is to say we could, but that’s another story. But we enslaved him because in order to conquer the country, we had to have cheap labor. And the man who is now known as the American Negro, who is one of the oldest of American citizens, and the only one who never wanted to come here, [applause] did the dirty work.”America needed, Baldwin said, to recognize the people who did the involuntary, unpaid hard work to make its founding possible.
Why Baldwin Is Important Today
Baldwin did not speak for any particular policy. He did not commemorate anything. Instead, his speech ripped away the myths, exposing the reality behind them. We need to see clearly before we can solve our problems.
It is no wonder that book-banning campaigns sometimes target Baldwin’s work. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, has been banned from Virginia to New York. A documentary film about Baldwin was banned in central Pennsylvania. The ban was reversed after student protest.
No, people don’t try to ban James Baldwin’s books because they mention sexual practices. They would also have to ban the Holy Bible. The Bible, after all, tells how Lot’s daughters got him drunk so he could get them pregnant (Gen. 19). Are book-burners banning the Bible? No. Baldwin’s books get banned because he tore down comfortable myths and exposed raw reality. Were Baldwin’s truths inarguable? Of course. That is precisely why people fear him.
Amazing, isn’t it? It becomes so easy for people to ignore the obvious, and sometimes so unpleasant to face reality. Myths comfort us, but truth frees us. That’s in the Bible, by the way: “the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32).
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Research Note: When I say that history twists the past, I don’t meant to disparage the work of professional historians. Most of them know and report the truth. I mean, instead, history as taught in schools, covered in high school textbooks, and discussed on television. The issues I describe are covered accurately in any number of excellent history books. As a straightforward starting point, I recommend the New York Times 1619 Project, which gives a disturbing account of American heritage, and which really should not be controversial.
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