Hope

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Collected Essays (1998)

  But in America, even as a slave, he was an inescapable part of the general social fa bric and no American could escape having an attitude toward him. Americans at tempt until today to make an abstraction of the Negro, but the very nature of these abstractions reveals the tremendous effects the presence of the Negro has had on the American character. 126 NOTES OF A NATIVE SON When one considers the history of the Negro in America it is of the greatest importance to recognize that the moral be lids of a person, or a people, arc never really as tenuous as lite-which is not moral-very oti:en causes them to appear; these create tor them a frame of retercnce and a necessary hope, the hope being that when lite has done its worst they will be enabled to rise above themselves and to triumph over life. Lite would scarcely be bearable if this hope did not exist. Again, c\·en when the worst has been said, to betray a belief is not by any means to have put oneself beyond its power; the betrayal of a belief is not the same thing as ceasing to believe. If this were not so there would be no moral standards in the world at all. Yet one must also recognize that morality is based on ideas and that all ideas are dangerous-dangerous because ideas can only lead to action and where the action leads no man can say. And dangerous in this respect: that confronted with the impossibility of remaining taithtul to one's beliets, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses. The ideas on which American beliets arc based arc not, though Americans often seem to think so, ideas which originated in America. They came out of Europe. And the establishment of democracy on the American continent was scarcely as radical a break with the past as was the necessity, which Americans faced, of broad ening this concept to include black men. This was, literally, a hard necessity.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  The movement does not have as its goal the consumption of overcooked hamburgers and tasteless coffee at various sleazy lunch counters. Neither do Negroes, who have, largely, been 182 NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME produced by miscegenation, share the white man's helpl essly hypocritical attitudes toward the time-honored and universal mingling. The goal of the student movement is nothing less than the liberation of the entire country from its most crip pling attitudes and habits. The reason that it is important of the utmost importance-f or white people, here, to see the Negroes as people like themselves is that white people will not, otherwise, be able to see themselves as they are. At the other pole is the Muslim movement, which daily becomes more powerful. The Muslims do not expect anything at all from the white people of this country. They do not believe that the American professions of democracy or equality have ever been even remotely sincere. They insist on the total separation of the races. This is to be achieved by the acquisi tion of land from the United States-land which is owed the Negroes as "back wages" for the labor wrested from them when they were slaves, and for their unrecognized and un honored contributions to the wealth and power of this coun try. The student movement depends, at bottom, on an act of faith, an ability to sec, beneath the cruelty and hysteria and apathy of white people, their bafflement and pain and essential decency. This is superbly difficult. It demands a perpetually cul tivated spiritual resilience, for the bulk of the evidence con tradicts the vision. But the Muslim movement has all the ev idence on its side. Unless one supposes that the idea of black supremacy has virtues denied to the idea of white supremacy, one cannot possibly accept the deadly conclusions a Muslim draws from this evidence. On the other hand, it is quite im possible to argue with a Muslim concerning the actual state of Negroes in this country- the truth, after all, is the truth. This is the great power a Muslim speaker has over his au dience. His audience has not heard this truth-the truth about their daily lives-honored by anyone else. Almost anyone else, black or white, prefers to soften this truth, and point to a new day which is coming in America. But this day has been coming for nearly one hun dred years. Viewed solely in the light of this country's moral professions, this lapse is inexcusable.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  I will say that my baby sister is a grown, married woman now, with an exceedingly swift and cunning son who has not the faintest intention of allowing me to t(>rget that I'm his uncle: so, for me, for all of us, I believe, that dreadful day in November of '48 is redeemed. Neither do I want anyone to suppose that I think that the gem of the ocean has kept any of its promises, but my ances tors counseled me to keep the faith: and I promised, I vowed, that I would. If I am a part of the American house, and I am, it is because my ancestors paid- striPing to make it m;• home so unimaginable a price: and I have seen some of the effects of that passion everywhere I have been, all over this world. That music is everywhere, resounds, resounds: and tells me that now is the moment, for me, to return to the eye of the hurricane. Nell' Ym·k, December 19, 1977 If Black English Isn)t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is? S T. PAUL DE VENCE, France-The argument concerning the usc, or the status, or the reality, of black English is rooted in American history and has absolutely nothing to do with the question the argument supposes itself to be posing. The argument has nothing to do with language itself but with the IY!�_<>U�I }gtuge. Language, incontestably, revea[S111e speaker. Languagc,also,'far more dubi<msly, Is meant to deh_!le the other-and, in this case, the other is refusing to be defiutd b�·-- �1-Iariguag�: tli1.t)as !!_c:ycr _b een __ ;_�!21<:: _t.<> _r�<,:Qg!!i�e_.hl!.n. - People evolve a language in order to describe and thus con trol their circumstances, or in order not to be submerged by a reality that they cannot articulate. (And, if they cannot ar ticulate it, they are submerged.) A Frenchman living in Paris speaks a subtly and crucially different language from that of the man living in Marseilles; neither sounds very much like a man living in Quebec; and they would all have great difficulty in apprehending what the man from Guadeloupe, or Marti nique, is saying, to say nothing of the man from Senegal although the "common" language of all these areas is French . But each has paid, and is paying, a ditlerent price for this "common" language, in which, as it turns out, they are not saying, and cannot be saying, the same things: They each have very different realities to articula!_� or contm!.... vVI1at -}oins all languages, and all men, is the necessity to confront lit e, in ordc� i>t ii1cimcdvably_,_ to outwit death: I he pr-ice-t�rlliiS- i;l:i�c-�c-cep-t�·;�ce, a;�d- ��1-tievement, of one's tern poral identity.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  These essays are a very small part of a private logbook. The question of color takes up much space in these pages, but the question of color, especially in this countr y, operates to hide the graver questions of the self. That is precisely why what we like to call "the Negro problem" is so tenacious in American life, and so dangerous. But my own experience proves to me that the connection between American whites and blacks is far deeper and more passionate than any of us like to think. And, even in icy Sweden, I fo und myself talking with a man whose endless questioning has given him himself, and who reminded me of black Baptist preachers. The questions which one asks oneself begin, at last, to illuminate the wor ld, and become one's key to the experience of others. One can only face in other s what one can f.1ce in oneself. On this conf ron tation depends the measure of our wisdom and compassi on . This enerb 'Y is all that one finds in the rubble of vanished civilizations, and the only hope fo r ours. JAMES BALDWIN PAR T ONE SI TTING IN THE HOUSE I. The Discovery of What It Means To Be an American I T IS a complex fate to be an American," Henry James observed, and the principal discovery an American writer makes in Europe is just how complex this fate is. America's history, her aspirations, her peculiar triumphs, her even more peculiar defeats, and her position in the world-yesterday and today-are all so profoundly and stubbornly unique that the very word "America" remains a new, almost completely un defined and extremely controversial proper noun. No one in the world seems to know exactly what it describes, not even we motley milhons who call ourselves-Americans. -- 1 left America because I doubted ril)iabillcyto survive the fury of the color problem here. (S ometimes-! · still do.) I wanted to prevent m, • om becoming merely egro; or, even, merely a . egro wr wanted to fin out in what way' the s�� ould be made to conn··�t me with other pcopl•· ii:J.stead of dividing nw fr.QAH:hem. (I was as isolated from Negroes as I was from whites, which is what happens when a Negro begins, at bottom, to believe what J.Vbjte people s�bou t-hinr;)--· -· -�� he\ · ;... . ; ' L ··,r' .. '� .

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  the principall of the Gods celestiall, the light of the goddesses: at my will the planets of the ayre, the wholesome winds of the Seas, and the silences of hell be diposed; my name, my divinity is adored throughout all the world in divers manners, in variable customes and in many names, for the Phrygians call me the mother of the Gods: the Athenians, Minerva: the Cyprians, Venus: the Candians, Diana: the Sicilians Proserpina: the Eleusians, Ceres: some Juno, other Bellona, other Hecate: and principally the Aethiopians which dwell in the Orient, and the Aegyptians which are excellent in all kind of ancient doctrine, and by their proper ceremonies accustome to worship mee, doe call mee Queene Isis. Behold I am come to take pitty of thy fortune and tribulation, behold I am present to favour and ayd thee, leave off thy weeping and lamentation, put away all thy sorrow, for behold the healthfull day which is ordained by my providence, therefore be ready to attend to my commandement. This day which shall come after this night, is dedicated to my service, by an eternall religion, my Priests and Ministers doe accustome after the tempests of the Sea, be ceased, to offer in my name a new ship as a first fruit of my Navigation. I command thee not to prophane or despise the sacrifice in any wise, for the great Priest shall carry this day following in procession by my exhortation, a Garland of Roses, next the timbrell of his right hand: follow thou my procession amongst the people, and when thou commest to the Priest make as though thou wouldest kisse his hand, but snatch at the Roses, whereby I will put away the skin and shape of an Asse, which kind of beast I have long time abhorred and despised, but above all things beware thou doubt not nor feare any of those things, as hard and difficill to bee brought to passe, for in the same houre that I am come to thee, I have commanded the Priest by a vision what he shall doe, and all the people by my commandement shall be compelled to give thee place and say nothing! Moreover, thinke not that amongst so faire and joyfull Ceremonies, and in so good a company that any person shall abhorre thy ill-favoured and deformed figure, or that any man shall be so hardy, as to blame and reprove thy suddaine restoration to humane shape, wherby they should gather or conceive any sinister opinion: and know thou this of certaine, that the residue of thy life untill the houre of death shall be bound and subject to me!

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  This is a rich confusion, indeed, and it creates t<>r the American writer unprecedented opportunities. That the tensions of American lite, as well as the possibili ties, are tremendous is certainly not even a question. But these are dealt with in contemporar y literature mainly compuls ively; that is, the book is more likely to be a symptom of our tension than an examina tion of it. The time has come, God knows, t(>r us to examine ourselves, but we can only do this if we are willing to free ourselves of the myth of America and try to find out what is really happening here. Every society is really governed by hidden laws, by unspo ken but prot(>Und assumptions on the part of the people, and ours is no exception. It is up to the American writer to find out what these laws and assumptions are. In a society much given to smashing taboos without thereby managing to be liberated from them, it will be no easy matter. It is no wonder, in the meantime, that the American writer keeps running otT to Europe. He needs sustenance for his journey and the best models he can find. Europe has what we do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable lim its oflitc, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a new sense of lite's possibilities. In this endeavor to wed the vision of the Old World with that of the New, it is the writer, not the statesman, who is our strongest arm. Though we do not wholly believe it yet, the interior lite is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people ha\'c a tangible ctlcct on the world. 2. Princes and Powers T HE Conference of Negro- African Writers and Artists (L e Cong1'es des Ecrivains et Artistes Noirs) opened on Wednesday, September 19, 195 6, in the Sorb onnc's Amphi theatre Descartes, in Par is. It was one of those bright, warm days which one likes to think of as typical of the atmosphere of the intellectual capital of the Western wor ld. There were people on the cafe terraces, boys and girls on the boulevards, bicycles racing by on their fantastically urgent erra nds. Every one and everything wore a cheerful aspect, even the houses of Paris, which did not show their age. Those who were unable to pay the steep rents of these houses were enabled, by the weather, to enjoy the streets, to sit, unnoticed, in the parks. The boys and girls and old men and women who had nowhere at all to go and nothing whatever to do, for whom no pro vision had been made, or could be, added to the beauty of the Paris scene by walking along the river.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  I could also see that the intransigence and ignorance of the white world might make that vengeance in evitable-a vengeance that docs not really depend on, and cannot really be executed by, any person or organization, and that cannot be prevented by any police force or army: histor ical vengeance, a cosmic vengeance, based on the law that we recognize when we say, "Whatever goes up must come down." And here we arc, at the center of the arc, trapped in the gaudiest, most valuable, and most improbable water wheel the world has ever seen. Everything now, we must assume, is in our hands; we have no right to assume otherwise. If we and now I mean the relatively conscious whites and the rela tively conscious blacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of the others-do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the DOWN AT THE CROSS 347 racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world. If we do not now dare everything, the fulfillment of that prophecy, re-created from the Bible in song by a slave, is upon us: God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time! NO NAME IN THE STREET for Berdis Baldwin and Beauford Delaney and Rudy Lombard and Jerome His remembrance shall perish from the earth and He shall have no name in the street. He shall be driven from light into darkness, and chased out of the world. Job 18:1 7 -18 Take Me to the Wa ter If I had-a-my way I'd tear this building down. Great God, then, if I had-a-my way If I had-a-my way, little children, I'd tear this building down. -SLAVE SoNG Just a little while to stay here, Just a little while to stay. -TRADITIONAL T HAT is a good idea," I heard my mother say. She was staring at a wad of black velvet, which she held in her hand, and she carefully placed this bit of cloth in a closet. We can guess how old I must have been from the fact that for years afterward I thought that an "idea" was a piece of black velvet. Much, much, much has been blotted out, coming back only lately in bewildering and untrustworthy flashes.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  For if they find their state intolerable, but arc too heavily oppressed to change it, they arc simply pawns in the hands of larger powers, which, in such a context, arc always unscrupulous, and when, eventua lly, they do change their situat ion-as in Cu ba-we arc menaced more than ever, by the vacuum that succeeds all violent uph eavals. We should certainly know by now that it is one thing to overthrow a dictator or repel an invader and quite another thing really to achieve a rev olution. Time and time and time again, the people discover that they have mer ely betrayed themselves into the hands of yet another Pharaoh, who, since he was necessary to put the broken coun try together , will not let them go. Perhaps, people being the conundrums that they arc, and having so little desire to shoul der the burden of their lives, this is what will always happen. But at the bottom of my heart I do not believe this. I think that people can be better than that, and I know that people can be better than they arc. We arc capable of bearing a great burden, once we discover that the burden is reality and arrive where reality is. Anyway, the point here is that we arc living in an age of rev olution, whether we will or no, and that Amer ica is the only Western nation with both the power and, as I hope to suggest, the experience that may help to make these rev olutions real and minimize the hu man damage. Any at tempt we make to oppose these outbur sts of energy is tanta mount to signing our death warrant. Behind what we think of as the Russian menace lies what DO WN AT THE CROSS 339 we do not wish to face, and what white Americans do not face when they regard a Negro: reality-the fact that lif e is tragic. Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun in exorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  These young MAR TIN LUTHER KING 657 people ha ve never believed in the American image of the Negro and have never bargained with the Republic, and now they never will. There is no longer any basis on which to bargain: for the myth of white supremacy is exploding all over the world, from the Congo to New Orleans. Those who have been watched and judged and described for so long are now watching and judging and describing for themselves. And one of the things that this means, to put it far too simply and bluntly, is that the white man on whom the American Negro has modeled himself for so long is vanishing. Because this white man was, himself , very largely a mythical creation: white men have never been, here, what they imagined themselves to be. The li beration of Americans from the racial anguish which has crippled us for so long can only mean, truly, the creation of a new people in this still-new world. But the battle to achieve this has not ended, it has scarcely begun. Martin Luther King, Jr., by the power of his person ality and the force of his belief s, has injected a new dimension into our ferocious struggle. He has succeeded, in a way no Negro before him has managed to do, to carry the battle into the individual heart and make its resolution the province of the individual will . He has made it a matter, on both sides of the racial fence, of self -e xamination; and has incurred, there fore, the grave responsibility of continuing to lead in the path he has encouraged so many people to follow. How he will do this I do not know, but I do not see how he can possibly avoid a break, at last, with the habits and attitudes, stratagems and fears of the past. No one can read the future, but we do know, as James has put it, that "all futures are rough." King's responsibility, and ours, is to that future which is already sending before it so many striking signs and portents. The possibility of lib eration which is always real is also always painful, since it involves such an overhauling of all that gave us our identity. The Negro who will emerge out of this present struggle-whoever, in deed, this dark stranger may prove to be-will not be de pendent, in any way at all, on any of the many props and crutches which help form our identity now. And neither will the white man.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  We know, in the case of the person, that whoever cannot tell him self the truth about his past is trapped in it, is immobilized in the prison of his undiscovered self . This is also true of nations. We know how a person, in such a paralysis, is unable to assess either his weaknesses or his strengths, and how frequently in deed he mistakes the one for the other. And this, I think, we do. We are the strongest nation in the western world, but this is not for the reasons that we think. It is because we have an opportunity which no other nation has of moving beyond the Old World concepts of race and class and caste, and create, finally, what we must have had in mind when we first began speaking of the New World. But the price for this is a long look backward whence we came and an unfli nching assessment of the record . For an artist, the record of that journey is most clearly revealed in the personalities of the people the journey produced. Societies never know it, but the war of an artist with his society is a lover's war, and he does, at his best, what lovers do, which is to reveal the beloved to himself, and with that revelation, make freedom real. Creati1>e Am erica, 1962 Color W HITE �E. aLU!Q!: _ _really whi!:�J;!J!UQJor<;_ci. people g_n SQ_�etimes b�-e.�r��_ely colored. In Negro speech, the word "colored" has very special reverberat ions. One may hear, in sorrow, "Man, that cat is ju st too color ed." And this can mean, depending on the speaker, the situation, the sub ject, that the cat under discussion is coarse, overb�<!dng,__in competent and so .u 11certai[1 of his valiJq.hat he j_� p��a\ly adoptmg the most outrageous and transparent affectations. Th1s is one of rheffi eanings of color Inn the psyche and--the experience of the American Negro. Bu t the same phrase can also be applied to someone who is...di.r�q, wann,_ unaffected and unconqu erable-someone, who, like Duke Ellington, is able to move, without missing a beat or manifesting the slightest uneasiness, from Harlem corn bread to Bu ckingham Palace caviar and back again, ad infinitum. "The Duke knows who is, man": which reveals another aspect of the meaning of color among the people who constitute America's most te nacious and problematical minority.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  We do not, in this country now, have much taste for, or any real sense of, the extremes human beings can reach; time will impr ove us in this regard; but in the meantime the general fear of experience is one of the reasons that the American writer has so peculi arly difficult and dangerous a time. One can never really see into the heart, the mind, the soul of another. Norman is my very good friend, but perhaps I do not really under stand him at all, and perhaps everyt hing I have tried to sug gest in the foregoing is false. I do not think so, but it may be. One thing, however, I am certain is not false, and that is simply the fact of his being a writer, and the in calculable potential he as a writer contains. His work, after all, THE BL ACK BOY LOOK S AT THE WHITE BOY 285 is all that will be left when the newspapers are yellowed, all the gossip columni sts silenced, and all the cocktail parties m·er, and when Norman and you and I are dead. I know that this point of view is not terribly fashionable these days, but I think we do have a responsibility, not only to ourselves and to our own time, but to those who are coming after us. (I refuse to belie,·e that no one is coming after us .) And I suppose that this responsibilit y can only be discharged by dealing as truth fully as we know how with our present fortunes, these present days. So that my concern with �orman, finally, has to do with how deeply he has understood these last sad and stormy e\·ents. If he has understood them, then he is richer and we are richer, too; if he has not understood them, we are all much poorer. For, though it clearly needs to be brought into focus, he has a real \"ision of ourseh·es as we are, and it cannot be too often repeated in this count ry now, that, where there is no ,·ision, the people perish. THE FIR E NEXT TI ME aGod gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time!" for James James Luc James Contents MY DUNGEON SHOOK: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundr edth Ann iversary of the Emancipat ion DoWN AT THE CRoss: Letter from a Region in My Mind . .

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Someone said, and said it very accurately, that what is honored in a country is cultivated there. If we apply this touchstone to American life we can scarcely fail to arrive at a very grim view of it. But I think we have to look grim facts in the face because if we don't, we can never hope to change them. These vanished aristocracies, these vanished standard bear ers, had several limitations, and not the least of these limi tations was the fact that their standards were essentially IN SEARCH OF A MAJORITY 21 7 nostalgic. They referred to a past condition; they referred to the achievements, the laborious achievements, of a stratified society; and what was evolving in America had nothing to do with the past. So inevitably what happened, putting it far too simply, was that the old forms gave way before the European tidal wave, gave way before the rush ofltalians, Greeks, Span iards, Irishmen, Poles, Persians, Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, wandering Jews from every nation under heaven, Turks, Ar menians, Lithuanians, Japanese, Chinese, and Indians. Every body was here suddenly in the melting pot, as we like to say, but without any intention of being melted. They were here because they had wanted to leave wherever they had been and they were here to make their lives, and achieve their futures, and to establish a new identity. I doubt if history has ever seen such a spectacle, such a conglomeration of hopes, fears, and desires. I suggest, also, that they presented a problem for the Puritan God, who had never heard ofthem and of whom they had never heard. Almost always as they arrived, they took their places as a minority, a minority because their influence was so slight and because it was their necessity to make themselves over in the image of their new and unformed country. There were no longer any universally accepted forms or standards, and since all the roads to the achievement of an identity had vanished, the problem of status in American life became and it remains today acute. In a way, status became a kind of sub stitute for identity, and because money and the things money can buy is the universally accepted symbol here of status, we are often condemned as materialists. In fact, we arc much closer to being metaphysical because nobody has ever ex pected fr om things the miracles that we expect. Now I think it will be taken for granted that the Irish, the Swedes, the Danes, etc., who came here can no longer be considered in any serious way as minorities; and the question of anti-Semitism presents too many special features to be prof itably discussed here tonight. The American minorities can be placed on a kind of color wheel.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Again, the most trenchant observers of the scene in the South, those who arc embattled there, feel that the Southern mobs arc not an ex pression of the Southern majority will. Their impression is that these mobs fill, so to speak, a moral vacuum and that the people who form these mobs would be very happy to be re leased from their pain, and their ignorance, if someone arrived to show them the way. I would be inclined to agree with this, simply from what we know of human nature. It is not my impression that people wish to become worse; they really wish to become better but very often do not know how. Most people assume the position, in a way, of the Jews in Egypt, who really wished to get to the Promised Land but were afraid of the rigors of the journey; and, of course, before you embark 215 216 NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME on a journey the terrors of whatever may overtake you on that journey live in the imagination and paralyze you. It was through Moses, according to legend, that they discovered, by undertaking this journey, how much they could endure. These speculations have led me a little bit ahead of myself. I suppose it can be said that there was a time in this country when an entity existed which could be called the majority, let's say a class, for the lack of a better word, which created the standards by which the country lived or which created the standards to which the country aspired. I am referring or have in mind, perhaps somewhat arbitrarily, the aristocracies ofVir ginia and New England. These were mainly of Anglo-Saxon stock and they created what Henry James was to refer to, not very much later, as our Anglo-American heritage, or Anglo American connections. Now at no time did these men ever form anything resembling a popular majority. Their impor tance was that they kept alive and they bore witness to two elements of a man's life which are not greatly respected among us now: (1) the social forms, called manners, which prevent us fr om rubbing too abrasively against one another and (2) the interior life, or the life of the mind. These things were im portant; these things were realities for them and no matter how roughhewn or dark the country was then, it is important to remember that this was also the time when people sat up in log cabins studying very hard by lamplight or candlelight. That they were better educated than we are now can be proved by comparing the political speeches of that time with those of our own day. Now, what I have been trying to suggest in all this is that the only useful definition of the word "majority" does not refer to numbers, and it docs not refer to power. It refers to influence.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Dante Evans was a fourteen-year-old child living in a FEMA trailer with his abusive father in Gulfport, Mississippi, after Hurricane Katrina. His dad, who had twice before nearly killed Dante’s mother, was shot by Dante while he slept in a chair. Dante had repeatedly told school officials about his father’s abuse, but no one ever intervened. I discussed Dante’s prior diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder following the attempted murder of his mother in my oral argument before the Mississippi Supreme Court. The Court emphasized the trial court’s refusal to permit introduction of this evidence and granted Dante a new trial. — Our death penalty work had also taken a hopeful turn. The number of death row prisoners in Alabama for whom we’d won relief reached one hundred. We had created a new community of formerly condemned prisoners in Alabama who had been illegally convicted or sentenced and received new trials or sentencing hearings. Most never returned to death row. Starting in 2012, we had eighteen months with no executions in Alabama. Continued litigation about lethal injection protocols and other questions about the reliability of the death penalty slowed the execution rate in Alabama dramatically. In 2013, Alabama recorded the lowest number of new death sentences since the resumption of capital punishment in the mid-1970s. These were very hopeful developments. Of course, there were still challenges. I was losing sleep over another man on Alabama’s death row, a man who was clearly innocent. Anthony Ray Hinton was on death row when Walter McMillian arrived in the 1980s. Mr. Hinton was wrongly convicted of two robbery-murders outside Birmingham after state forensic employees mistakenly concluded that a gun recovered from his mother’s home had been used in the crimes. Mr. Hinton’s appointed defense lawyer got only $500 from the court to retain a gun expert to confront the state’s case, so he ended up with a mechanical engineer who was blind in one eye and who had almost no experience testifying as a gun expert.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Huey, on that day, the day which prompted Bobby Seale to describe Huey as "the baddest motherfucker in history," re stored to the men and women of the ghetto their honor. And, for this reason, the Panthers, far fr om being an illegal or a lawless organization, are a great force for peace and stability in the ghetto. But, as this suggests an unprecedented measure of autonomy for the ghetto citizens, no one in authority is prepared to face this overwhelmingly obvious fact. White America remains unable to believe that black America's griev ances are real; they are unable to believe this because they cannot face what this fact says about themselves and their country; and the effect of this massive and hostile incompre hension is to increase the danger in which all black people live here, especially the young. No one is more aware of this than the Black Panther leadership. This is why they are so anxious to create work and study programs in the ghetto-everything fr om hot lunches for school children to academic courses in high schools and colleges to the content, format, and distri bution of the Black Panther newspapers. All of these are an tidotes to the demoralization which is the scourge of the ghetto, are techniques of self-realization. This is also why they are taught to bear arms-not, like most white Americans, be cause they fear their neighbors, though indeed they have the + 56 NO NAME IN THE STREET most to fear, but in order, this time, to protect their lives, their women and children, their homes, rather than the life and property of an Uncle Sam who has rarely been able to treat his black nephews with more than a vaguely benign con tempt. For the necessity, now, which I think nearly all black people see in different ways, is the creation and protection of a nucleus which will bring into existence a new people. The Black Panthers made themselves visible-made them selves targets, if you like-in order to hip the black community to the presence of a new force in its midst, a force working toward the health and liberation of the community. It was a force which set itself in opposition to that force which uses people as things and which grinds down men and women and children, not only in the ghetto, into an unrecognizable pow der. They announced themselves especially as a force for the rehabilitation of the young-the young who were simply per ishing, in and out of schools, on the needle, in the Army, or in prison.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  This is a very serious issue for the future, considering how long people are living and how much they will need to turn to their children for loving care and support in their old age. 4 A LMOST ALL THE young adults from divorced families in our group knew their father’s address at the twenty-five-year mark, but unlike Gary and his dad, most were not close friends. Their relationship was very different from those in the good intact families where fathers and adult sons grew closer and both valued the relationship more as the father aged. Few divorced fathers were good friends with their adult children. Fathers and sons did keep in touch and come together for important family events, such as the birth of new children, birthdays, holidays, and sometimes regular visits with grandchildren. A few fathers and sons played golf or tennis regularly. Over the years, fathers who had disappointed their children were observed from afar for any sign of increased interest in their adult children. “I think he’s beginning to mellow,” they reported. The way that adult sons were able to hold on to their hope and compassion was very moving. Some went in search of fathers they had seen only rarely and tried hard to find points in common. One thirty-year-old man remembered the airplane models that he and his dad had built together when he was a little boy. He purchased several model sets and invited his father to join him in model building in the hope that they could go back and retrieve their old ties. Sam, a thirty-one-year-old photographer, said, “I keep in touch with him. He’s getting older now and maybe more reliable. He abandoned me, I know that. But there’s no point getting sad or pissed off. People do what they have to do.” Here I’d like to point out a strange phenomenon that baffles many observers of our divorce culture. I have met men who were good, loyal, decent fathers to the children born in a second marriage or to stepchildren from the remarriage. If you asked those children about their dad, they’d say he was the best in the world. Yet this same man a few years earlier walked away from the children in his first marriage. They’d say he was the worst dad in the world. How could one person behave so differently? One such father in the study explained his behavior when he said, “I wasn’t happy in my previous marriage. I never felt that my first wife belonged to me. The marriage was so terrible, I became disgusted, and after a while I didn’t try. It ended. I had two children. My son was seven when I left. So he doesn’t think much of me. I literally packed and left in front of him, which is very hurtful to a child. I know that. Whatever feelings he harbors toward me to this day I understand.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  However, there are quasi-integral and potential parts assigned to it: integral parts, with regard to those things the concurrence of which is requisite for an act of fortitude; and potential parts, because what fortitude practices in face of the greatest hardships, namely dangers of death, certain other virtues practice in the matter of certain minor hardships and these virtues are annexed to fortitude as secondary virtues to the principal virtue. As stated above ([3338]Q[123], AA[3],6), the act of fortitude is twofold, aggression and endurance. Now two things are required for the act of aggression. The first regards preparation of the mind, and consists in one’s having a mind ready for aggression. In this respect Tully mentions “confidence,” of which he says (De Invent. Rhet. ii) that “with this the mind is much assured and firmly hopeful in great and honorable undertakings.” The second regards the accomplishment of the deed, and consists in not failing to accomplish what one has confidently begun. In this respect Tully mentions “magnificence,” which he describes as being “the discussion and administration,” i.e. accomplishment “of great and lofty undertakings, with a certain broad and noble purpose of mind,” so as to combine execution with greatness of purpose. Accordingly if these two be confined to the proper matter of fortitude, namely to dangers of death, they will be quasi-integral parts thereof, because without them there can be no fortitude; whereas if they be referred to other matters involving less hardship, they will be virtues specifically distinct from fortitude, but annexed thereto as secondary virtues to principal: thus “magnificence” is referred by the Philosopher (Ethic. iv) to great expenses, and “magnanimity,” which seems to be the same as confidence, to great honors. Again, two things are requisite for the other act of fortitude, viz. endurance. The first is that the mind be not broken by sorrow, and fall away from its greatness, by reason of the stress of threatening evil. In this respect he mentions “patience,” which he describes as “the voluntary and prolonged endurance of arduous and difficult things for the sake of virtue or profit.” The other is that by the prolonged suffering of hardships man be not wearied so as to lose courage, according to Heb. 12:3, “That you be not wearied, fainting in your minds.” In this respect he mentions “perseverance,” which accordingly he describes as “the fixed and continued persistence in a well considered purpose.” If these two be confined to the proper matter of fortitude, they will be quasi-integral parts thereof; but if they be referred to any kind of hardship they will be virtues distinct from fortitude, yet annexed thereto as secondary to principal. Reply to Objection 1: Magnificence in the matter of liberality adds a certain greatness: this is connected with the notion of difficulty which is the object of the irascible faculty, that is perfected chiefly by fortitude: and to this virtue, in this respect, it belongs.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. This action of Christ’s has a figurative meaning pertaining to all who were after Him to be baptized; and therefore he says, straightway He ascended, and not simply He ascended, for all who are worthily baptized in Christ, straightway ascend from the water; that is, make progress in virtues, and are carried on towards a heavenly dignity. They who had gone down to the water carnal and sinful sons of Adam, straightway ascend from the water spiritual sons of God. But if some by their own faults make no progress after baptism, what is that to the baptism? RABANUS. As by the immersion of His body He dedicated the laver of baptism, He has shewn that to us also after baptism received the entrance to heaven is open, and the Holy Spirit is given, as it follows, and the heavens were opened. JEROME. Not by an actual cleaving of the visible element, but to the spiritual eye, as Ezekiel also in the beginning of his book relates that he saw them. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. For had the actual creation of the heavens been opened, he would not have said were opened to Him, for a physical opening would have been open to all. But some one will say, What, are the heavens then closed to the eye of the Son of God, who even when on earth is present in heaven? But it must be known, that as He was baptized according to the ordinance of humanity that He had taken on Him, so the heavens were opened to His sight as to His human nature, though as to His divine He was in heaven. REMIGIUS. But was this then the first time that the heavens were opened to Him according to His human nature? The faith of the Church both believes and holds that the heavens were no less open to Him before than after. It is therefore said here, that the heavens were opened, because to all them who are born again the door of the kingdom of heaven is opened.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  CHRYSOSTOM. He restored her to life not by bringing in another soul, but by recalling that which had departed, and as it were raising it from sleep, and through this sight preparing the way for belief of the resurrection. And He not only restores her to life, but commands food to be given her, as the other Evangelists relate, that that which was done might be seen to be no delusion. And the fame of him went abroad into all that country. GLOSS. (non occ.) The fame, namely, of the greatness and novelty of the miracle, and its established truth; so that it could not be supposed to be a forgery. HILARY. Mystically; The Lord enters the ruler’s house, that is, the synagogue, throughout which there resounded in the songs of the Law a strain of wailing. JEROME. To this day the damsel lays dead in the ruler’s house; and they that seem to be teachers are but minstrels singing funeral dirges. The Jews also are not the crowd of believers, but of people making a noise. But when the fulness of the Gentiles shall come in, then all Israel shall be saved. HILARY. But that the number of the elect might be known to be but few out of the whole body of believers, the multitude is put forth; the Lord indeed would that they should be saved, but they mocked at His sayings and actions, and so were not worthy to be made partakers of His resurrection. JEROME. He took her by the hand, and the maid arose; because if the hands of the Jews which are defiled with blood be not first cleansed, their synagogue which is dead shall not revive. HILARY. His fame went about into all that country; that is, the salvation of the elect, the gift and works of Christ are preached. RABANUS. Morally; The damsel dead in the house is the soul dead in thought. He says that she is asleep, because they that are now asleep in sin may yet be roused by penitence. The minstrels are flatterers who cherish the dead. GREGORY. (Mor. xviii. 43.) The multitude are put forth that the damsel may be raised; for unless the multitude of worldly cares is first banished from the secrets of the heart, the soul which is laid dead within, cannot rise again. RABANUS. The maiden is raised in the house with few to witness, the young man without the gate, and Lazarus in the presence of many; for a public scandal requires a public expiation; a less notorious, a lesser remedy; and secret sins may be done away by penitence. 9:27–3127. And when Jesus departed thence, two blind men followed him, crying, and saying, Thou Son of David, have mercy on us. 28. And when he was come into the house, the blind men came to him: and Jesus saith unto them, Believe ye that I am able to do this? They said unto him, Yea, Lord.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  I might have pitied them if I had DOWN AT THE CROSS 3 1 5 not found myself in their hands so often and discovered, through ugly experience, what they were like when they held the power and what they were like when you held the power. The behavior of the crowd, its silent intensity, was the other thing that forced me to reassess the speakers and their mes sage. I sometimes think, with despair, that Americans will swallow whole any political speech whatever-we've been do ing very little else, these last, bad years-so it may not mean anything to say that this sense of integrity, after what Harlem, especially, has been through in the way of demagogues, was a very startling change. Still, the speakers had an air of utter dedication, and the people looked toward them with a kind of intelligence of hope on their fa ces-not as though they were being consoled or drugged but as though they were be ing jolted. Power was the subject of the speeches I heard. We were offered, as Nation of Islam doctrine, historical and divine proof that all white people arc cursed, and are devils, and are about to be brought down. This has been revealed by Allah Himself to His prophet, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. The white man's rule will be ended forever in ten or fifteen years (and it must be conceded that all present signs would seem to bear witness to the accuracy of the prophet's state ment). The crowd seemed to swallow this theology with no effort-all crowds do swallow theology this way, I gather, in both sides of Jerusalem, in Istanbul, and in Rome-and, as theology goes, it was no more indigestible than the more fa miliar brand asserting that there is a curse on the sons of Ham. No more, and no less, and it had been designed tor the same purpose; namely, the sanctification of power. But very little time was spent on theology, for one did not need to prove to a Harlem audience that all white men were devils. They were merely glad to have, at last, divine corroboration of their ex perience, to hear-and it was a tremendous thing to hear that they had been lied to fo r all these years and generations, and that their captivity was ending, fo r God was black.