An Open Letter to My Sister, Miss Angela
Davis - November 19,1970
By James Baldwin’
January 24, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" -
Dear Sister:
One might have hoped that, by this hour, the very
sight of chains on black flesh … would be so
intolerable a sight for the American people, and so
unbearable a memory, that they would spontaneously
rise up and strike off the manacles. But, now, more
than ever, Americans appear to measure their safety
in the chains and corpses of others. And so,
Newsweek, can put you on its cover, chained.
You look exceedingly alone—as alone, say, as the
Jewish housewife in the boxcar headed for Dachau, or
as any one of our ancestors, chained together during
the ocean passage. …
Well. Since we live in an age in which silence is
not only criminal but suicidal, I have been making
as much noise as I can, here in Europe, on radio and
TV. In fact, I have just returned from a land,
Germany, which was made notorious by a silent
majority not so very long ago. …
|
Are You Tired Of
The Lies And
Non-Stop Propaganda?
|
Let me put it this way. As
long as white Americans take refuge in their
whiteness… they will allow millions of other people
to be slaughtered... So long as their
whiteness puts so sinister a distance between their
own experience and the experience of others, they
will never feel themselves sufficiently worthwhile
to become responsible for themselves. As we once put
it in our black church, they will perish in their
sins—that is, in their delusions. … [Emphasis
added]
Now we do feel ourselves sufficiently worthwhile to
change our fate and the fate of our children! … We
know that a person is not a thing and is not to be
placed at the mercy of things. We know that air and
water belong to all mankind and not merely to the
wealthy. We know that a baby does not come into the
world merely to be the instrument of someone else’s
profit. ..
My dear sister Angela, some of us, white and black,
know how great a price has already been paid to
bring a new consciousness. If we know that, then we
must fight for your life as though it were our
own—which it is. We must render impassable with our
own bodies the corridor to the gas chamber. For, if
they take you in the morning, they will be coming
for us that night.
Therefore: peace.
Brother James
This article was
published by "Ray
McGovern" -
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