The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Reissued Edition

by James Baldwin

My memory stammers: but my soul is a witness.

History, I contend, is the present—we, with every breath we take, every move we make, are History—and what goes around, comes around.

was not because the Republic had desired it but because we had willed it.

real meaning and history of Manifest Destiny, for example, is nothing less than calculated and deliberate genocide. But American folklore, which has seduced American history into a radiant stupor, transforms this slaughter into a heroic legend.

His presumed dominance blinds him to the rigors of his own captivity.

Grief, as we know, translates very easily into rage—rage, in fact, at heaven.

but a child reacts to the value you place on it.

This self-perpetuating rage and anguish is because the man who wishes to bless is forced to curse, and the hand that would caress is forced to strike.

The White man, someone told me, discovered the Cross by way of the Bible, but the Black man discovered the Bible by way of the Cross.

I have a dream. This dream must, alas, be disentangled from whatever nightmare controls this fearfully White Republic.

I had the feeling, dimly, then, but very vividly later, that he died because he had been rejected by the only community he knew, that we had had it in our power to bring the light back to his eyes. He was a sinner and he died, therefore, in sin; but, we are all sinners. Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone.

community—which, as I have understood it, simply means our endless connection with, and responsibility for, each other.

This is the only nation under heaven that contains the universe—east and west, north and south, black and white. This is the only nation in the world that can hope to liberate—to begin to liberate—mankind from the strangling idea of the national identity and the tyranny of the territorial dispute.