What Truth Sounds Like: Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin, and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America

by Michael Eric Dyson

Perhaps he hoped that in the coming generation many more white folk could do as Kennedy did: sit as an equal at the breakfast table with a black man. That would signal real racial change.

While he had a few folk in mind, it was the luck of the draw: who of Baldwin’s high-profile friends or acquaintances happened to be available the next afternoon. Fortunately, some of the folk he had mentioned on the spot to Kennedy agreed to assemble.

Hence the dilemma black voters perpetually face: how to effectively argue for their just reward for loyalty to a party that often takes them for granted while keeping its eye on the disaffected white voter who might potentially bail in resentment of the few benefits offered to black folk.

“It really was one of the most violent, emotional verbal assaults and attacks that I had ever witnessed,” Clark recalled. “Bobby sat immobile in the chair. He no longer continued to defend himself. He just sat, and you could see the tension and the pressure building in him.”

King was committed to working within the parameters of political legitimacy. Baldwin and some of his mates doubted the will of the state to reconcile itself to black destiny.