Book and Movie Review: I Am Not Your Negro, a documentary Directed by Raoul Peck, from texts by James Baldwin (2016)

 

Poster and the cover of the book I Am Not Your Negro, directed by Raoul Peck, from texts by James Baldwin. (Documentary 2016, book 2017)

Filmmaker Raoul Peck

Author James Baldwin, 1924-1987.

Even though he died more than 30 years ago, James Baldwin’s writing has remained steadily in view over the last few years. People are continually drawn to Baldwin’s powerful prose, and his incisive writing about race in America, which is still very relevant today.

Filmmaker Raoul Peck made the 2016 documentary I Am Not Your Negro by drawing on Baldwin’s writings, published and unpublished, to create a portrait of a writer who had much to say about being a Black man in America. Peck worked with the cooperation of Baldwin’s estate, and found the key to his documentary when Baldwin’s sister Gloria gave him a packet containing Baldwin’s notes for a book to be titled Remember This House. Baldwin never finished the book, but it was to be about three significant Black men who were assassinated during the 1960’s: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Baldwin knew all three men, and it’s tantalizing to think what might have been if Baldwin would have completed the book. As it is, even the notes Baldwin took in preparation for the book have a resonant power.

The book I Am Not Your Negro contains the writings that are used in the film, and the book acts as a textual companion to the film. I watched the documentary first, and then read the book. I suppose one could read the book and decide not to watch the movie, but they’re really meant to go together, so discussing the book separately from the movie seems superfluous to me.

In the movie we see many archival film clips of Baldwin speaking—two of the most notable clips are Baldwin’s 1965 appearance at Cambridge University, where he debated William F. Buckley about civil rights, and a 1968 appearance on The Dick Cavett Show. Baldwin had a very expressive face, with large eyes and a wide grin that seemed to show all his teeth. He also had a charisma that draws you in. Baldwin’s writings are read by Samuel L. Jackson, who does a superb job.

One of the best moments in I Am Not Your Negro is the exchange between Baldwin and Paul Weiss, a white philosophy professor at Yale, on The Dick Cavett Show. Weiss essentially says that he feels that Baldwin makes too big a deal out of race, and that there’s so much that unites us. Baldwin fires back with a heated response, which I’ll paraphrase here:

“I don’t know what most white people in this country feel. But I can only conclude what they feel from the state of their institutions…You want me to make an act of faith, risking myself, my wife, my woman, my sister, my children on some idealism which you assure me exists in America, which I have never seen.” (p.88-9)

Baldwin has a beautiful and heartbreaking quote about attending Martin Luther King’s funeral: “I did not want to weep for Martin; tears seemed futile. But I may also have been afraid, and I could not have been the only one, that if I began to weep, I would not be able to stop.” (p.95)

I Am Not Your Negro also features Baldwin’s famous quotation, from a 1962 essay: “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” (p.103)

I Am Not Your Negro is essential viewing, and once you’ve finished watching it, pick up a James Baldwin book like The Fire Next Time, No Name in the Street, or Notes of a Native Son.