“I had been sent away to help guarantee and perpetuate this indifference. No one, here, knew what was happening anywhere else. Perhaps no one ever knows that, anywhere: wherever "here" may be, it must always happen "here" before it can be perceived to have happened. And then, it is not really perceived, it is simply endured. Out of this endurance come, for the most part, alas, monuments, legends, and lies. People cling to these in order to deny that what happened is always happening; that what happened is not an event skewered and immobilized by time, but a continuing and timeless mirror of ourselves.”

American writer and civil rights activist

James Baldwin was an American writer and civil rights activist. Born in 1924 and active through much of the 20th century, he became known for essays, novels, plays, and poems that spoke with unusual force about race, identity, and human equality. His 1953 novel Go Tell It on the Mountain brought him wide attention, and Notes of a Native Son, published in 1955, helped establish him as a major public voice. He was also a notable orator, especially during the civil rights movement in the United States, and his 1965 debate with William F. Buckley is often remembered as a defining public exchange.