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Baldwin And Civil Rights Essay

368 Words2 Pages

Along with Baldwin’s opinions, he includes several historical facts that support his reasoning for being on the forefront of fighting for civil rights. The first situation he describes is when his friend Tony Maynard was falsely accused of a crime and put in jail. Lewis M. Steel, the man who tried Tony’s case wrote in an article that “Maynard had been wrongfully accused of a 1967 shotgun killing in Greenwich Village, convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to ten to twenty years. Using a shotgun as the murder weapon was completely out of character for this stylish man with an artist’s sensibility” (Steel). When Baldwin heard about this, he became more angry with the Americans than before, increasing the oppression of the African-Americans. …show more content…

Malcolm X was killed in 1965, and Baldwin was in London at the time, but he found out shortly after. Gloria, Baldwin’s sister, answered the call and quickly relayed the message back to him. She said, “‘Well, I’ve got to tell you because the press is on its way over here. They’ve just killed Malcolm X.’” Baldwin went on to write about why the press was on its way to him, writing about how he was wrongly believed to have falsely accused innocent people of his murder (117-118). Malcolm X was a somewhat close companion of Baldwin during the Civil Rights Movement, but the death of a closer comrade impacted Baldwin much more. He received the call from a friend who had either just witnessed or heard news from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death, knowing there was something wrong by the tone of the caller’s voice: “He said, ‘Jimmy—? Martin’s just been shot,’ and I don’t think I said anything, or felt anything. I’m not sure I knew who Martin was. Yet, though I know—or I think—the record player was still playing, silence fell. David said, ‘He’s not dead yet’—then I knew who Martin was—‘but it’s a head wound so—’” (152). The factual accounts of these impactful events illustrate just a fraction of the oppression and brokenness the African-Americans felt during the

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