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Summary Of The Film A Dive Into James Baldwin's Take This Hammer

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Ali Hassan Professor O’Malley ANTH 100 12 March 2024 A Dive into James Baldwin’s Take This Hammer There is a common misconception among the masses when discussing the quality of life for African Americans after the Great Migration. It is easy to assume that after African Americans gained their freedom, their quality of life will surely change for the better. The truth is far from that. Although innovation created pronounced opportunities for African Americans to move up north to urban areas during the Great Migration, just as many obstacles and hardships ensued as well. The documentary Take This Hammer by James Baldwin explores these adversities that are faced by African Americans in San Francisco, a city known for being quite progressive during …show more content…

Those residing in these figuratively desert-like communities essentially needed a form of transportation to have their basic needs met. Any attempts made to allow for easy public transit were strongly opposed by racist whites. In Kevin Kruse’s The 1619 Project, in his chapter titled “Traffic,” he states that many “suburbanites” strongly oppose the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA). In 1965, almost all white residents of Cobb County voted against running the transit system to their neighborhoods (Kruse, 409). It is easy to see how difficult it is to have any form of upward mobility, let alone survive. This lack of reliable transportation makes it that much more difficult to keep jobs and get an education, which are some of the most important methods for accumulating wealth after owning property. It is hard to miss the interactions that Baldwin had with the San Francisco residents as they revealed their dim realities about their lack of upward mobility. Therefore, the lack of easy physical mobility created a lack of financial and societal upward mobility for African Americans, which can be seen clearly as a day in the film Take This

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