No Name In The Street Summary

Baldwin’s point of views are learned throughout his book, No Name in the Street. In this 1972 collection of essays we were assigned to read, Baldwin’s idea on race is described. By the 1970’s, Baldwin seemed to despair and in a way loose hope in race. He had witnessed so much already with before, for example, the assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and even Evers. All of these men had been killed because of racial hatred. Baldwin seemed to make race a very important factor for many reasons, but for me, what stood out was the fact that he understood. He said something on Malcolm X that caught my attention, “What made him unfamiliar and dangerous was not his hatred for white people, but his love for blacks, his apprehension of the …show more content…
While Malcolm was a separationist who believed in fighting back when attacked, King was an integrationist who used non-violent protest to gear the media towards moral wrongs the dominant white society imposed on blacks. Baldwin supported both, but also didn’t one-hundred percent agree with everything. James Baldwin didn’t believe in racial separation. His belief was that we needed to live together in love and unity; not as blacks, not as whites, as humans. Baldwin had perseverance and never stopped criticizing on hypocrisy on race. Eventually, people did listen. He was able to stand between two different ends of the movement, Malcolm and Martin Luther King, and bring forward the positive attributes and show people the importance in humanity and …show more content…
Baldwin was an even stronger believer in human rights. He linked the African-American civil rights movement to other rights by not only fighting for African-Americans, but for everyone as a whole because he believed that we as a nation need to expand our limited view of the world and include all races. He spoke about America needing to change the way it viewed itself along with other nations in order to survive. Baldwin also expanded the Civil Rights troubles into a fight and struggle for freedom for everyone. He believed that whoever was degrading others was also degrading themselves.