Now, this - we’re talking about human beings. And the federal government is an accomplice to this fact. They were tearing down his house, because San Francisco is engaging, as most Northern cities now are engaged, in something called urban renewal, which means moving the Negroes out. And I couldn’t say, “You do.” I don’t have any evidence to prove that he does. He said, “I’ve got no country, I’ve got no flag.” And he’s only 16 years old. JAMES BALDWIN: A boy last week - he was 16 - in San Francisco, told me, on television - thank God we got him to talk. This is James Baldwin speaking in 1963 about federally backed urban renewal programs. We’re speaking with professor Eddie Glaude, chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University, his new book, just out, Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own. When I was asked to comment, I found myself reaching for Baldwin.AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, The Quarantine Report. Glaude says: “We thought the book spoke to the moment. 4 after George Floyd’s murder, it changed again, to June 30. Then the pandemic hit and Glaude’s publication date was moved to Aug. That account - weaving biography, literary criticism and social criticism with a thread of memoir - was originally scheduled to come out on April 24.

I needed to work through my own rage, my own despair, and offer an account of this moment.” In a phone interview, Glaude says: “I went back to my apartment and started writing furiously. Glaude describes the incident in the introduction to “Begin Again”: “One officer had his knee in the man’s back the others twisted his arms.” Within an hour of his arrival, he witnessed a horrific scene at a train station that changed the trajectory of his book: Four white policemen piled on top of a distraught Black man. Baldwin said the best way to think about America is not to be in America.” Hurricane Maria interfered with this plan, so Glaude headed to Heidelberg, Germany. Thomas, figuring: “If I’m going to write a book on Baldwin, I need to be out of the country. While on sabbatical from Princeton University, where he is a professor of African-American studies, Glaude rented an apartment in St. A year went by and I hadn’t written a sentence.” 5 on the hardcover nonfiction list, as an intellectual biography of James Baldwin: “But then I ran into this wall. says he first envisioned “ Begin Again,” now at No.

Glaude begin again