For him, the country had to go through this phase around color in order, finally, to get beyond it. Baldwin still hoped, even in his angriest of moments, that we, and I am convinced he meant all of us, could be better. Here is that staunch commitment in No Name, the book dripping with so much grief and rage: To be an Afro-American, or an American Black, is to be in the situation, intolerably exaggerated, of all those who have ever found themselves part of a civilization which they could in no wise honorably defend—which they were compelled, indeed, endlessly to attack and condemn—and who yet
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