MAINTAINING the STATUS QUO

Recently, I have begun to make known some of my personal spiritual conclusions. I have reached some of these “revelations” after spending many hours in research and meditation. By expressing my understanding, it has always been my hope to stimulate real interest in the pursuit of the connection between the CREATOR and his/her creation. It has never been my purpose to “convert” others, or to cause anyone discomfort concerning their religious/spiritual beliefs. Growth has always been at the forefront of my written expressions because in the spiritual realm, as in the physical realm, you evolve or die. With all this in mind, I offer you the reader some historical perspective below for your consideration, in your journey to spiritual enlightenment.

Historical Beginnings of the Black Church

America’s war for independence gave slaves the desire for their own religious expression. However, the slave master feared the slaves would come to understand the contradiction of how they (slaves) were being treated and the Christian doctrine of "love" for your fellow man portrayed in the Bible. Personally, I could never understand how someone could lynch and murder a human being and in the next breath talk about GOD'S grace.  So whites applied very strict limits on black religious services. Initially a few “house negros” as apposed to the “field negros” were allowed to attend services with whites, but were segregated to an all black section within the church.

Interestingly enough ”church” still remains one of the most segregated institutions in America!

Slave owners soon came to realize that religion could be utilized as a mechanism to control slaves. They began to allow field slaves to attend white church services as long as an “overseer” accompanied them. Later because they didn’t want black field hands in their services they began to build blacks their own modest churches on the plantation, with the ever-present overseer attending ensuring that the "proper message" was being preached.

During the latter part of the 18^th century whites allowed blacks to begin building their own churches and conduct their own religious services. A national policy was developed requiring whites to select and license ALL BLACK PREACHERS. Slave owners only allowed the most compliant, controllable blacks that were selected and licensed to become ministers. These ministers were taught to encourage slaves to be meek, obedient and to accept whites as their masters. The slaves were taught to remain loyal to their slave masters, to accept their station in life and to disregard any thoughts of improvement in this life, to look instead for your "reward" in the next.

Although I cannot offer it as fact, after exhaustive research, I couldn’t find one major Black Divinity School in America, not one !!!

Since blacks couldn’t develop any independent businesses or any professional organizations, the ministry became a “profession” as well as a business. Black ministers numbers began to multiply in number. They instantly began to be looked upon as leaders among the other blacks. Popularity, respect, and security came with the position. There was no “educational requirement” only the obligation to maintain the existing Status Quo between slaves and their masters.

The black church was once a sanctuary from the daily grind of racial discrimination and inequality for the Black Afrikan American community, now....

The modern black church has developed into a profit centered, big business. This institution, which should be standing up for its poor and disenfranchised members often represents the worst exploiter of the poor and disenfranchised that has ever existed in the Black Afrikan American community. Its unconsciousable embrace of individualism and materialism is cloked in a feel good message of salvation and prosperity. Unfortunately the message of salvation and prosperity that the black church promotes seems to only apply to a select few (ie, pastor). While the financial situation of the members remain stagnant.

I don’t want to insinuate that this is the case in every black church, but it is the reality in far to many black churches. There are a numbers of issues and problems that face the Black Afrikan American community, ie, drugs, self-induced extinction through violence, disintergration of the family structure, disproportunate incarceration of our black youth, and economic stagnation just to name a few. On most of these issues the church remains strangely silent, offering no viable solution to the multitude of problems.
Churches could use the money you give them to institute programs to educate and uplift our people, but instead their passivity works in concert with the mechanism of our oppression, to maintain the Status Quo.

We, as a people must learn to develop and institute our solutions. Organized religion, polititians, so-called black leadership have all contributed nothing in our pursuit of freedom and socio-economic empowerment. We must come together, as a Afrikan people and stand tall in  the face of adversity, admit our weaknesses and amplify our strenghts. We must decide if the Staus Quo is good enough. Are we content to always accept what is given or will we come together on one accord and build a community we can all be proud of ?

Together we can accomplish all things,

if we just BELIEVE WE CAN !!!

Ase’

The Emmett Till Case

The circumstances surrounding the death of Emmett Till provide chilling insight into the racism that dominated the South in the 1950s. Till was a fourteen-year-old Chicago native visiting relatives in Mississippi. While out with his cousins and friends on the night of August 24, 1955, he allegedly "accosted" a white woman in the grocery store owned by her husband, Roy Bryant. Accounts vary as to what Till actually said or did. According to the woman Till grabbed her and made lewd remarks. Some witnesses claimed that he only whistled at her.

Roy Bryant considered his wife's honor tainted by the incident. Several nights after the episode, Bryant, his half brother J. W. Milam, and possibly other accomplices kidnapped Till from his relatives' home in the middle of the night. A key witness was 18-year-old sharecropper Willie Reed, who said that on the morning after Till was abducted, he saw Emmett on a truck with six people: Bryant, Milam, two other white men, and two black men who worked for Milam.  The two men beat him severely, beyond recognition and, apparently enraged that he had a picture of a white woman in his wallet, shot Till in the head and threw him in a nearby river. Several days later the body was found, and Bryant and Milam were charged with murder. Till's mother, showing great courage, insisted on an open casket at his funeral, "to show the world what they did to my son".

Mississippi politicians and newspapers publicly condemned the murderers and promised swift justice.  The highly publicized trial of the two men was charged with racial tension. African-American politicians and reporters from the North were treated as outsiders and were segregated in the courtroom. The prosecution was poorly prepared, and the substance of the defense was the astounding claim that Till was not actually dead. The badly decomposed body was identified only by Till's ring on his finger. The sheriff of Tallahatchee County, who investigated the case, speculated on the witness stand that an unnamed group of so-called "rabble-rousers" had planted the evidence. The all-male, all-white jury was apparently convinced: they acquitted Bryant and Milam after deliberating slightly longer than one hour.

Lynchings were often public spectacles: Crowds of whites gathered and cheered on unspeakable acts of torture and savagery. Many parents brought their kids. Some participants would send postcards of the events back home to friends and relatives. Others would vie for souvenirs like a finger or another body part. Few of the perpetrators of these acts were ever identified or brought to trial. Many of the unfortunate victims of these heinous, racially motivated, acts of cowardice, remain anonymous to this day.

The truth of what happened that night became public knowledge several months after the trial. William Bradford Huie, an Alabama journalist in Mississippi to report on the aftermath of the case, offered Bryant and Milam money to tell their story. Since the two could no longer be prosecuted for a crime of which they had already been acquitted, they gladly told for a fee of how they had beaten and killed young Till. Huie reported what the killers told him in the 24 January 1956 issue of Look magazine. Now publicly exposed as murderers, Bryant and Milam were ostracized by the community, and both moved elsewhere within a year. Emmett Till in death became a martyr for the civil rights movement, a symbol of race based persecution of African-Americans.

Both Milam and Bryant are now deceased. However, it is believed that others who participated in the crime are still alive today. In May 2004, the Justice Department, calling the 1955 prosecution a "grotesque miscarriage of justice," reopened the murder investigation. In June 2005, the FBI exhumed Till's body and had an autopsy performed. The case is still considered...OPEN!

Those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat it!

As the economic climate continues to spiral downward people will look for someone to blame. They will look for someone to vent there frustrations against. When they review socio-economic policies, when the media portrays us as being the largest beneficiaries of their hard earned dollars via welfare, and socialized medical care, we will become the focus of their contempt. We must anticipate our circumstances turning tenuous at best. Who will protect us?, the law?, the police? Police are being fired at alarming rate in urban areas across this country. We must forget our trivial differences and accept the mentality of The Village and initiate action to protect ourselves. We must empower ourselves. Our very survival may depend on it

HATSHEPSUT

In relating OUR STORY we must realize that OUR STORY did not begin when we were brought to the shores of America. Our story contains not only great deeds of black men but of great black women as well. This is the story of one of those great black women....

Hatshepsut, meaning Foremost of Noble Ladies, of ancient Egypt is considered on of the greatest female rulers of all time. She was the first woman in recorded history to confront and literally destroy the theory of male superiority.

Hatshepsut was the elder daughter of Thutmose I and Queen Ahmose, the first king and queen of the Thutmoside clan of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Thutmose I and Ahmose are known to have had only one other child, a daughter, Akhbetneferu, who died in infancy. Thutmose I also married Mutnofret, possibly a daughter of Ahmose I, and produced several half-brothers to Hatshepsut: Wadjmose, Amenose, Thutmose II, and possibly Ramose, through that secondary union. Both Wadjmose and Amenose were prepared to succeed their father, but neither lived beyond adolescence.

Royal lineage was traced through the women in ancient Egypt. Hatshepsut could trace her female ancestry to her jet-black Ethiopian grandmother, Nefertari Aahmes. Marriage to a queen of the royal lineage was necessary, even if the king came from outside of the lineage as happened occasionally. Secondary unions to other women in the royal family assured that there would be heirs from the lineage of women who could became the royal wives. This is the reason for intermarriages. The royal women also played a pivotal role in the religion of ancient Egypt. The queen officiated at the rites in the temples, as priestess, in a culture where religion was inexorably interwoven with the roles of the rulers.

Upon the death of her father in 1493 BCE, Hatshepsut married her half-brother, Thutmose II, and assumed the title of Great Royal Wife. Thutmose II ruled Egypt for 13 years, during which time it has traditionally been believed that Queen Hatshepsut exerted a strong influence over her husband. It is generally believed that Thutmose II was overweight, sickly, and a weakling, allowing Hatshepsut to run the affairs of the monarchy unopposed during their 13 years of marriage. When Thutmose II died, he left behind only one son, a young Thutmose III to succeed him. The latter was born as the son of a lesser wife of Thutmose II rather than of the Great Royal Wife, Hatshepsut, as Neferure, Hathshepsut's daughter was. Due to the relative youth of Thutmose III, he was not eligible to assume the expected tasks of a Pharaoh. Instead, Hatshepsut became the regent of Egypt at this time, assumed the responsibilities of state, and was recognized by the leadership in the temple.

Upon the death of Thutmose II Hatshepsut startled all Egypt by declaring she was now a man. She seized the throne, started to dress as a man, and donned a fake beard. Hatshepsut crushed all opposition by announcing that she was not the daughter of Thutmose I, but was the virgin birth son of Amen and her mother Ahmose. She declared that Amen appeared to her mother in a "flood of light and perfume" and through Immaculate Conception produced a male child (herself). From then on her statues and sculptured portraits depicted her with a beard and male features. Hatshepsut became firmly entrenched as King/Pharaoh for the next 21 years as her popularity increased along with Egypts prosperity. She opened trade to neighboring lands, and her reign was generally peaceful.

She later commissioned her Black architect boyfriend, Senenmut to build the colossal Temple of Amen-Ra at Karnak, which became a strong hold for her detractors. She then commissioned Senenmut to build another magnificent temple called Deir el Bahari out of sheer rock cliffs that looked down on the temple of Amen-Ra. Del el Bahari is considered one of the world's most remarkable architectural achievements. As a final blow to her opposition Hatshepsut ordered the creation of two of the largest obelisk the world had ever seen. She purposely made the obelisk larger than the the Temple of Amen-Ra so that the roof would have to be removed to accommodate them. She made the obelisk more conspicuous by encasing the tops in a mixture of silver and gold. This made the obelisk so brilliant in the sunlight that whenever anyone saw the city, the most brilliant sight was her obelisk, not the Temple of Amen-Ra.

Hatshepsut died under mysterious circumstances. It is believed that Thutmose III upon coming of age to become Pharaoh, decided to seize political power from Hatshepsut and had her killed. Thutmose declared Hatshepsut a "non-person" and had her image erased from many Egyptian artifacts. It is believed that Neferure, Hatshepsut daughter later became the royal wife of Thutmose III.

Hatshepsut's rule was one of the most prosperous times in ancient Egypt. Memories of Hatshepsut persisted for many centuries after her tenure as Pharaoh. Hatshepsut was a great Black woman during Africa's "Golden Age". 

BLACK WALL STREET

In 1921, Tulsa, Oklahoma was considered the "Oil Capital of the World," and the black community that existed there was among the most prosperous in the nation. The area was home to several prominent black businessmen, many of them multimillionaires. Greenwood boasted a variety of thriving businesses that were very successful The Greenwood section of town was known both as:

 "Little Africa" and as "The Black Wall Street."

After the civil war many African-Americans settled in Oklahoma because of employment opportunities from the oil fields. Around 1908 the community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma was established. Based on the growth of African-Americans in Greenwood, Jim Crow laws legalizing segregation were passed in 1908.

However, following World War I, the United States Supreme Court declared the Jim Crow segregation laws unconstitutional in 1915. African-Americans progressed thereafter without restriction. Growth ensued. Consequently, the African-American community became subjected to continual harassment and other discriminatory actions from white mobs.

As time went on the level and frequency of violence against the black community, in Greenwood escalated. In 1919 two Black prisoners were removed from incarceration and lynched.

On the Night of May 31, 1921, mobs called for the lynching of Dick Rowland, A black man who shined shoes, who was accused of sexually assaulting a white woman named Sarah Page, an elevator operator. Although no "official" report of Ms. Page's accusation was ever made it was later uncovered that she informed authorities that Rowland had merely lost his balance and fell into her.

Seizing an opportunity to confront the successful black residents of Greenwood a local newspaper, the Tulsa Tribune, printed the fabricated story that Rowland tried to rape Page. A crime, for which he was never formally charged. In an editorial, the same newspaper told enraged white residents that a hanging was planned for that night.

The confidence of the black community members in the security of Dick Rowland was non-existent. Small groups of armed black men began to venture toward the courthouse in automobiles, partly for reconnaissance, but with their weapons visible, they were also demonstrating that they were prepared to take necessary action to protect Dick Rowland. The white community members quickly interpreted these actions as a "Negro uprising".

On June 1, 1921 confrontations between angry white mobs and the black people of Greenwood ensued. Outnumbered and outgunned Blacks were viciously attacked.  Led by the Ku Klux Klan and their sympathisers, "deputized" by ranking officials of the police department, the black people of Greenwood were lynched, shot, and murdered. Their homes were looted and burned. In a period spanning 12 hours, the carnage left over 300 Black Americans dead and over 600 highly successful businesses burned and destroyed. Over 1,500 homes were burned as members of the police flew airplanes overhead, dropping nitroglycerin and incendiary kerosene bombs on homes and businesses over a 35-square block radius. Although many of the residents affected by the riots had insurance, the insurance companies refused to make good on their policies.

The attack completely destroyed Greenwood. Those citizens who were not killed fled the area, because there was nothing to come back to. The governor declared martial law and the National Guardsmen reestablished law and order. Eventually, the community was rebuilt; however, it never again regained its former prominence.

In 2003, a lawsuit for reparations was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma, seeking damages and restitution, based on violations of the Fourteenth Amendment. To date, no reparations have been given to the victims, or their descendants, of what has come to be referred to as the Black Holocaust.

DRED SCOTT DECISION

Born around 1800, Dred Scott later migrated westward with his master, Peter Blow. They travelled from Scott's home state of Virginia to Alabama and then, in 1830, to St. Louis, Missouri. Two years later in 1832, Peter Blow died; Scott was subsequently bought by army surgeon Dr. John Emerson, who later took Scott to the free state of Illinois. In the spring of 1836, after a stay of two and a half years, Emerson moved to a fort in the Wisconsin Territory, taking his slave, Scott with him. While there, Scott met and married Harriet Robinson, a slave owned by a local justice of the peace. Ownership of Harriet was transferred to Emerson.

Scott's extended stay in Illinois, a free state, gave him the legal standing to make a claim for freedom, as did his extended stay in Wisconsin, where slavery was also prohibited. But Scott never made the claim while living in the free lands, perhaps because he was unaware of his rights at the time. After two years, the army transferred Emerson again, this time to the south: first to St Louis, then to Louisiana. A little over a year later, a recently-married Emerson summoned his slave couple. Instead of staying in the free territory of Wisconsin, or going to the free state of Illinois, the two travelled over a thousand miles, apparently unaccompanied, down the Mississippi River to meet their master. Only after Emerson's death in 1843, when Emerson's widow hired Scott out to various families including an army captain, did Scott seek freedom for himself and his wife. First he offered to buy his freedom from Mrs. Emerson, then living in St. Louis, for the sum of $300. The offer was refused. Scott then sought his freedom through the courts.

Scott went to trial in June of 1847, but lost on a technicality he couldn't prove that he and Harriet were the property of  Emerson's widow. The following year the Missouri Supreme Court decided that case should be retried. In an 1850 retrial, the the St Louis circuit court ruled that Scott and his family were free. Two years later the Missouri Supreme Court stepped in again, reversing the decision of the lower court. Scott and his lawyers then brought his case to a federal court, the United States Circuit Court in Missouri. In 1854, the Circuit Court upheld the decision of the Missouri Supreme Court. There was now only one other place to go. Scott appealed his case to the United States Supreme Court.
The nine justices of the Supreme Court of 1856 certainly had biases regarding slavery. Seven had been appointed by pro-slavery presidents from the South, and of these, five were from slave-holding families. In his attempt to bring his case to the federal courts, Scott had claimed that he and the case's defendant (Mrs. Emerson's brother, John Sanford, who lived in New York) were citizens from different states. The main issues for the Supreme Court, therefore, were whether it had jurisdiction to try the case and whether Scott was indeed a citizen. Scott lost the decision as seven out of nine Justices on the Supreme Court declared no slave or descendant of a slave could be a U.S. citizen, or ever had been a U.S. citizen. As a non-citizen, the court stated, slaves had no rights and could not sue in a Federal Court and must remain a slave. 
Under the law whether or not the Scotts were entitled to their freedom was not as important as the consideration of their value as property.
The decision of the court was read in March of 1857. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, a staunch supporter of slavery wrote the "majority opinion" for the court. It stated that because Scott was black, he was not a citizen and therefore had no right to sue. The chief justice wrote, blacks had been "regarded as beings of an inferior order" with "no rights which the white man was bound to respect." The decision also declared the Missouri Compromise of 1820, legislation which restricted slavery in certain territories, unconstitutional.

 While the decision was well-received by slaveholders in the South, many northerners were outraged. The decision greatly influenced the nomination of Abraham Lincoln to the Republican Party and his subsequent election, which in turn led to the South's secession from the Union.

Peter Blow's sons, childhood friends of Scott, had helped pay Scott's legal fees through the years. After the Supreme Court's decision, the former master's sons purchased Scott and his wife and set them free.

Dred Scott died nine months later.

The 13th amendment abolished slavery

It is believed that the 14th amendment overturns the Dred Scott decision. This forum does not afford me the opportunity to offer my opinion as to whether or not this is the case. Read the 14th amendment yourself and decide if " substantive due process" is enough.

DENMARK VESEY, a Man of Conviction

Denmark Vesey

About 1767, Denmark Vesey was born with the name  Telemanque on the island of St. Thomas in the Danish West Indies, which today is the U.S. Virgin Islands. At a young age, Denmark assumed the surname of his owner, Joseph Vesey, a resident of Charleston, SC, who was the captain of a slave ship. Before they settled in Charleston, South Carolina in 1783, Denmark traveled along with his master on many slave-trading voyages.

While in Charleston, Denmark managed to educate himself as well as learning to read. In 1800, seventeen years after his arrival in Charleston, Denmark won $1,500.00 in a street lottery and used $600.00 of his winnings to buy his freedom. Now free, he stayed in Charleston and worked as a carpenter. But Denmark was not satisfied, because although free, all other blacks were still looked upon as property, subservient to their masters. Denmark hated slavery and often spoke out against the abuse and exploitation of his people.

With each passing day, Denmark witnessed the continued injustice tolerated by the slaves he saw in Charleston, which drove him to seek out and read abolitionist literature. With this knowledge, and the fact that he was aware of a successful slave revolt that occurred in Haiti in the 1790s, he began to organize and plot a similar slave uprising for Charleston.

He started by selecting a cadre of exceptional lieutenants. Vesey began organizing the black community in and around Charleston to stand up and fight for their freedom. Denmark's plan was to attack the arsenals in Charleston and seize the weapons. Upon accomplishing this, he would arm all the slaves who in turn were to burn the city and kill the white oppressors. Although not exact, this type of plan was similar to that which John Brown orchestrated at Harpers Ferry years later.

With his plan finalized, Denmark and nearly 9,000 slaves from the city of Charleston and nearby plantations were at the ready. This was the largest slave revolt in American history! The revolt was scheduled to begin on July 14, 1822. However, the day before his plot was scheduled to begin, a  house servant (house Negro), with knowledge of the plan, alerted the white authorities. They in turn made the necessary military preparations to confront Vesey and his followers. Later Denmark received word of the possible ambush. Now unable to fulfill his plans, he called them  off.

Over a period covering the following two months, 130 blacks were arrested and brought to trail. Of these, sixty-seven were accused and convicted of taking part in this slave revolt. Thirty-five of the sixty-seven, including Denmark, were hanged; the remaining thirty-two were exiled. Additionally, four white men were tried and convicted of having encouraged the revolt, and were fined and imprisoned for their part.

Upon Denmark Vesey's appearance in court, the following disposition was written:
On Thursday, the 27^th, (June) Denmark Vesey, a free black man, was brought before the court for trial; (assisted by his counsel, G.W. Cross, Esq.)

These facts of his guilt the journals of the court will disclose - that no man can be proved to have spoken of or urged the insurrection prior to himself.
All the channels of communication and intelligence are traced back to him. His house was the place appointed for the secret meetings of the conspirators, at which he was invariably a leading and influential member; animating and encouraging the timid, by the hopes and prospects of success; removing the scruples of the religious, by the grossest prostitution and perversion of the sacred oracles, and inflaming and confirming the resolute, by all the savage fascinations of blood and booty.
The peculiar circumstances of guilt, which confer a distinction on his case, will be found narrated in the confession of Rolla, Monday Gell, Frank, and Jesse, in the appendix. He was sentenced for execution on the 2^nd of July.

I offer the biography of Denmark Vesey not as a call for violence but as an example of a man who was willing to sacrifice everything he had, including his life, to help free his people. He was a living as a "free man" enjoying  the fruits of his own personal freedom but he understood that as long as one of us is in (mental) slavery none of us are truly free, as long as one of us in in extreme poverty, none of us truly have material wealth and most of all, as long as one of us remain ignorant, none of us are truly wise. We can learn and evolve from those who have gone before us, if we are willing to open our hearts, and minds.

ASE'

James Baldwin

      Take a moment and read the bio of one of the greatest writers of....OUR STORY

 

 James Baldwin – 1924 to 1987 

Writer, playwright. Born August 2, 1924, in Harlem, New York. One of the 20th century's greatest writers, James Baldwin broke new literary ground with the exploration of racial and social issues in his many works. He was especially well known for his essays on the black experience in America.

Baldwin was born to a young single mother, Emma Jones, at Harlem Hospital. She reportedly never told him the name of his biological father. Jones married a Baptist minister named David Baldwin when James was about three years old. Despite their strained relationship, he followed in his stepfather's footsteps—which he always referred to as his father—during his early teen years. He served as a youth minister in a Harlem Pentecostal church from the ages of 14 to 16.

Baldwin developed a passion for reading at an early age, and demonstrated a gift for writing during his school years. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, where he worked on the school's magazine with future famous photographer Richard Avedon. He published numerous poems, short stories, and plays in the magazine, and his early work showed an understanding for sophisticated literary devices in a writer of such a young age.

After graduating high school in 1942, he had to put his plans for college on hold to help support his family, which included seven younger children. He took whatever work he could find, including laying railroad track for the U.S. Army in New Jersey. During this time, Baldwin frequently encountered discrimination, being turned away from restaurants, bars, and other establishments because he was African-American. After being fired from the New Jersey job, Baldwin sought other work and struggled to make ends meet.

On July 29, 1943, Baldwin lost his father—and gained his eighth sibling the same day. He soon moved to Greenwich Village, a New York City neighborhood popular with artists and writers. Devoting himself to writing a novel, Baldwin took odd jobs to support himself. He befriended writer Richard Wright, and through Wright he was able to land a fellowship in 1945 to cover his expenses. Baldwin started getting essays and short stories published in such national periodicals as The Nation, Partisan Review, and Commentary.

Three years later, Baldwin made a dramatic change in his life, and moved to Paris on another fellowship. The shift in location freed Baldwin to write more about his personal and racial background. "Once I found myself on the other side of the ocean, I see where I came from very clearly...I am the grandson of a slave, and I am writer. I must deal with both," Baldwin once told The New York Times. The move marked the beginning of his life as a "transatlantic commuter," dividing his time between France and the United States.

Baldwin had his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, published in 1953. The loosely autobiographical tale focused on the life of a young man growing up in Harlem grappling with father issues and his religion. "Mountain is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else. I had to deal with what hurt me most. I had to deal, above all, with my father," Baldwin later said.

     Primary Works of James Baldwin

Go Tell It on the Mountain (novel). New York: Knopf, 1953.

Notes of a Native Son (essays). Boston: Beacon, 1955.

Giovanni's Room (novel). New York: Dial, 1956.

Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (essays). New York: Dial, 1961.

Another Country (novel). New York: Dial, 1962.

The Fire Next Time (essays). New York: Dial, 1963.

Blues for Mr. Charlie (play). New York: Dial, 1964.

Going to Meet the Man (stories). New York: Dial, 1965. Contains "Sonny's Blues."

The Amen Corner (play). New York: Dial, 1968.

Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (novel). New York: Dial, 1968.

A Rap on Race (dialogue with Margaret Mead). Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1971.

No Name in the Street (essays). New York: Dial, 1972.

One Day, When I Was Lost: A Scenario Based on "The Autobiography of Malcolm X." New York: Dial, 1973.

A Dialogue: James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1973.

If Beale Street Could Talk. New York: Dial, 1974.

The Devil Finds Work: An Essay. New York: Dial, 1976.

Little Man, Little Man (juvenile). New York: Dial, 1977.

Just Above My Head (novel). New York: Dial, 1979.

Jimmy's Blues: Selected Poems. London: Joseph, 1983; New York: St. Martin's, 1985.

The Evidence of Things Not Seen (essay). New York: Holt, 1985.

The Price of the Ticket: Collected Non-Fiction 1948-1985. New York: St. Martin's, 1985.

Collected Essays. New York: Library of America, 1998.

Early Novels and Stories. New York: Library of America, 1998.