The Baldwin documentary I Am Not Your Negro is timely, timeless

The 2016 Raoul Peck documentary, I Am Not Your Negro, is of course timely – and also timeless. I have to say that the concept wasn’t to me, at first, promising: A documentary about black lives in the U.S. built around a Samuel L. Jackson reading of the manuscript for an unfinished James Baldwin book. It seemed as if it would be a jumble of ideas loosely linked, and that the unfinished project (Remember This House) was probably left unfinished for a reason. But – not so. First of all the book project – initially planned as a detailed look at the assassination of 3 great Black leaders, ML King, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X – is perhaps even more powerful in its truncated for, very much a personal essay about Baldwin himself and his lifetime struggle against racism and hatred, touching on the murder of these 3 men, each of whom he knew, without going into great detail about the circumstances of their deaths. Even more, Peck builds out the Baldwin essay/Jackson reading into a serious, sorrowful, frightful look at the roots and branches of racism in the U.S., including images of Blacks in movies, advertising, dance and music, as well as streets protests, marches, so-called race riots, and, most moving and scary (to me) the horrifying footage of the brave Black Americans, especially school children, who put their lives at risk to break down barriers to integration and acceptance, particularly in the South the the 1950s and 60s. (The faces of the angry white cowards and bullies who tormented these brave souls look ominously familiar today.) And of course Peck also uses some great footage of Baldwin himself, including his famous appearance on the Dick Cavett Show at which he eviscerated a foolish if well-meaning Yale professor who wondered why Baldwin talks to much about race – Can’t we all just get along? – and also Baldwin’s landmark appearances at the Cambridge University Debate forum in which Baldwin lays out the causes and the necessary response to racism in America, earning a prolonged standing ovation.