For blacks this meant recognizing that America was their proper homeland, occupied by their ancestors the year before English Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock, and therefore all separatist visions along the lines of those espoused by Marcus Garvey or the Nation of Islam were delusions: “Negroes are Americans and their destiny is the country’s destiny,” Baldwin declared. “They have no other experience besides their experience on this continent and it is an experience which cannot be rejected.” For good measure, he added that “the black man” was “as American as the Americans who despise him, the
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