34 pages • 1 hour read
James BaldwinI Am Not Your Negro
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Key Figures
James Baldwin
Born in Harlem, New York in 1924, James Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, and poet. He is known for his work addressing race, class, and sexuality, and for writing that features multiple gay protagonists.
Baldwin’s mother left his biological father before Baldwin was born, but in his texts, Baldwin refers to his abusive stepfather as his father. He was the second eldest of ten step-siblings. Growing up, he became a primary caretaker for his younger siblings.
Growing up, Baldwin was a voracious reader and soon started writing. The supportive teacher he mentions in Part 2 appeared in his life when he was ten, but she did not outweigh the racist abuse Baldwin received at school.
In 1948, at age 24, Baldwin, weary of American racism, segregation, and having his writing reduced to a niche interest, moved to Paris. There, he met Lucien Happersberger, a Swiss painter who became Baldwin’s lover and lifelong partner (excepting Happersberger’s short-lived marriage to actress Diana Sands). In Paris, Baldwin found himself free of the danger and fear that had dogged him in America. He continued to travel in his adulthood.
Throughout his life, Baldwin befriended many artists, entertainers, and activists—including Miles Davis, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers. Baldwin died of stomach cancer in 1987, at age 63, in France.
Raoul Peck
Raoul Peck is the director of the film I Am Not Your Negro, and the editor of the text edition. Although Peck does not appear directly in the book outside of the introduction, he is responsible for compiling and editing the materials that make up the text.
Like Baldwin, Peck is an emigrant, which has informed his self-perception and his understanding of history. Peck was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1953. Peck’s family fled Haiti when he was eight, escaping to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Peck’s schooling took place in the DRC, Brooklyn, and France. At 35, Peck earned a degree in film in West Berlin, and went on to found a German film production company, initially focusing on sociopolitical documentary. Peck directed both documentary projects and feature films.
From 1996 to 1997, Peck held the office of Haitian Minister of Culture. After resigning in political protest, Peck returned to filmmaking. For many years he hoped to create a project focusing on the life of James Baldwin. This project finally became possible when he befriended Baldwin’s sister, who provided the notes that would become I Am Not Your Negro, Peck’s most widely distributed film to date.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of the most prominent figures of the American civil rights movement. King was a Christian minister, which informed his stance that civil rights could be attained through nonviolent civil disobedience. To this end, King helped organize actions such as marches, the Montgomery bus boycotts, and the Birmingham protests that Baldwin references.
King employed nonviolent passive resistance strategically to raise support for antiracist causes; he also advocated direct confrontation and strategic civic disobedience. As Baldwin notes, King’s nonviolent stance became increasingly complicated as he aged and recognized a new generation of activists that prioritized direct or militant action.
From 1963, King was surveilled and targeted by the FBI. According to a 1975 US congressional report, the FBI sought to neutralize King as a civil rights leader. King was also surveilled by the CIA, who claimed to be investigating possible ties to communism.
King was assassinated in 1968 while standing in his hotel balcony in Tennessee, where he had traveled to support striking Black laborers. James Earl Ray, a White American man who held several convictions for theft and fraud, was arrested for the assassination, and died in prison. At the time of his death, King was being surveilled by undercover police officers, who were the first to respond to his assassination.
Following King’s assassination, dozens of cities across the United States experienced civil unrest. Days later, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which, among other things, prohibited housing discrimination.
Malcolm X
Malcolm X was another prominent figure of the civil rights movement, whose strategies and beliefs often stood in contrast with King’s. X was born Malcolm Little in Nebraska, growing up in a series of foster homes. His turbulent childhood was marked by several counts of theft, and at twenty-one he was sentenced to ten years in prison. During his sentence, X joined the Nation of Islam (NOI), a movement founded in the 1930s claiming to seek the spiritual and political enrichment of African Americans (although it is also now tracked as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center). He also changed his last name from Little to X at the encouragement of the Nation of Islam, saying that the X stood in for the unknown name of his African ancestors, replacing the name that had been forced upon his ancestors by White slave masters.
During this time X adopted ideals of Black supremacy and Black separatism. His experiences in prison and beyond are further explored in his book The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which Baldwin mentions seeking to adapt into a screenplay.
After being paroled in 1952, X became a minister in the Nation of Islam, and was responsible for a large increase in recruitment and membership. The FBI had begun surveillance of X while he was in prison after he had claimed to be a communist. Their surveillance increased as his role in the NOI grew. X was a powerful speaker with (as Baldwin expresses) an impressive physical demeanor. He advocated for the return of Black people to Africa, the idea that White people would inevitably go extinct, and the necessity of combatting White supremacy with violence. These stances placed him and NOI frequently at odds with other Black activists and civil rights groups, who labelled him an extremist.
When Baldwin describes feeling like an outsider in Part 3, he mentions that he was not Black Muslim, and that he did not want Black people to believe that the White man in the devil. These comments stand in direct contrast with X.
After becoming critical of the Nation of Islam in the 1960s, X traveled to Mecca for his Hajj, a Muslim pilgrimage to the holy site of Mecca, and became a Sunni Muslim. During this experience, X witnessed Muslims of all races joining in worship and came to believe that Islam could be the solution to anti-Black racism.
X was subject to many threats when he left the NOI, and he was well aware that his life was in danger. In 1965, when he was preparing to give an address, a man ran forward in the crowd, shooting and killing X. The identity of the killer is still unknown.
Medgar Evers
Medgar Evers, born 1925, was the Mississippi field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Evers was born and raised in Mississippi, attending segregated schools, and eventually joined the military during World War II. After being honorably discharged, Evers gained his business degree in Mississippi, got married, and had three children.
In adulthood, Evers became involved with activist organizing. He became the president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, helping to organize multiple local boycotts, protests, and voter registration drives.
After Brown v. Board of Education dictated in 1954 that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, White supremacists in Mississippi responded by creating the anti-integration White Citizens' Council (who are referenced in Part 1). Evers had become a prominent civil rights leader in Mississippi, completing high-profile actions such as investigating the murder of Emmett Till, a fourteen year old boy who was lynched in 1955 while on summer vacation.
Evers was also consistently tailed by the FBI, and lived with the threat of violence from the Ku Klux Klan. Evers was keenly aware that his life was in danger. He faced the threat of violence daily: A driver had once attempted to hit him with their car, and on another occasion, a bomb had been thrown into his carport. In 1963, Evers drove home, got out of his car, and was shot in the back. His wife found Evers outside their house and took him to an all-White hospital, where he was the first Black man ever admitted. He died shortly after.
Nine days later, KKK member Byron De La Beckwith was arrested for Evers’ assassination. His all-White jury did not reach a verdict, and Beckwith was released. In 1994, thirty-one years later, a new judge came to the county, and Evers’ widow, Myrlie Evers, brought the case back to court. This time, Beckwith was found guilty, and he died in prison seven years later.
Evers’ life and death has inspired numerous pieces of prose and songwriting. Among these is Bob Dylan’s song “Only A Pawn In Their Game,” which is quoted in the text frames Beckwith and the Klan members as pawns used by politicians to uphold White supremacy.
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