When Baldwin came into the garden to be interviewed, I was so excited that I could not blink back the tears. That probably explains why he suggested that we begin with wine. Well into that first (of several) bottles, I confessed to him my promise to Jo Baker. Not missing a beat, he told me to bring Jo here. Did he think that she would drive back from Monte Carlo with me? Just tell her that dinner is served at nine.
And she did, after a warm and loving lunch with her family (we met eleven of the legendary twelve children), at her favorite restaurant overlooking Cape Martin. She had recently returned from a pilgrimage to Israel, and was looking forward to her return to the stage, her marvelous comeback. She was tall, as gracious and as warm as she was elegant, sensuous at sixty-five. Pablo this; Robeson that; Salvador so and so: she had been friends with the Western tradition, and its modernists. Everywhere we drove, people waved from the sidewalks or ran over to the car. She was so very thoughtful, so intellectual, and so learned of the sort of experience that, perhaps, takes six decades or so to ferment. I cannot drink a glass of Cantenac Brown without recreating her in its bouquet.
How did all of this lead to my present career? Time would not print the story, because, they said, “Baldwin is passé, and Baker a memory of the thirties and forties.” My narrative remains unpublished, but shall appear in a new essay collection called With the Flow. When I went “up” to Cambridge from Time and London in October 1973, I was so angered by the idiocy of that decision that I threw myself into the B.A. curriculum for English Language and Literature. A year later, I was admitted into the Ph.D. program, and four years later, I was awarded my degree.
That evening was the very last time that my two heroes saw each other, and the last time that Jo Baker would be interviewed at her home. She would die, on the stage, too soon thereafter. One day I hope to be forced to write about my other hero, James Baldwin.—HLG
Gates: Mrs. Baker, why did you leave the United States?
Baker: I left in 1924, but the roots extend long before that. One of the first things I remember was the East St. Louis Race Riots (1906). I was hanging on to my mother’s skirts, I was so little. All the sky was red with people’s houses burning. On the bridge, there were running people with their tongues cut out. There was a woman who’d been pregnant with her insides cut out. That was the beginning of my feeling.
One day I realized I was living in a country where I was afraid to be black. It was only a country for white people, not black, so I left. I had been suffocating in the United States. I can’t live anywhere that I can’t breathe freedom. I must be free. Haven’t I that right? I was created free. No chains did I wear when I came here. A lot of us left, not because we wanted to leave, but because we couldn’t stand it anymore. Branded, banded, cut off. Canada Lee, Dr. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, Marcus Garvey—all of us, forced to leave.
Gates: Did the French people offer you a respite from race prejudice?
Baker: The French adopted me immediately. They all went to the beaches to get dark like Josephine Baker. They had a contest to see who could be the darkest, like Josephine Baker, they said. The French got sick, trying to get black—café au lait—you weren’t anything unless you were café au lait.
I felt liberated in Paris. People didn’t stare at me. But when I heard an American accent in the streets of Paris, I became afraid. I would tremble in my stomach. I was afraid they’d humiliate me.
I was afraid to go into prominent restaurants in Paris. Once, I dined in a certain restaurant with friends. An American lady looked at our table and called the waiter. “Tell her to get out,” the lady said. “In my country, she is belonging only in the kitchen.” The French management asked the American lady to leave. To tell the truth, I was afraid of not being wanted.
Gates: Mr. Baldwin, when did you leave the United States and for what reasons?
Baldwin: It was November, 1948, Armistice Day as a matter of fact. I left because I was a writer. I had discovered writing and I had a family to save. I had only one weapon to save them, my writing. And I couldn’t write in the United States.
Gates: But why did you flee to France?
Baldwin: I had to go somewhere where I could learn that it was possible for me to thrive as a writer. The French, you see, didn’t see me; on the other hand, they watched me. Some people took care of me. Else I would have died. But the French left me alone.
Gates: Was it important for you to be left alone?
Baldwin: The only thing standing between my writing had to be me: it was I, it was me—I had to see that. Because the French left me alone, I was freed of crutches, the crutches of race. That’s a scary thing.
Gates: Did you find any basic differences between Americans and Europeans, since you said that you could at least be left alone in Paris?
Baldwin: There was a difference, but now the difference is a superficial one. When I first came to Paris, it was poor—everybody was broke. Now, Europe thinks it has something again, that it has regained the material things it lost. So Europeans are becoming Americans. The irony, of course, is that Europe began the trend even before America was formed. The price of becoming “American” is beating the hell out of everybody else.
Gates: Mrs. Baker, you said you felt “liberated” in France. Did the freedom you found here in France sour you towards the United States?
Baker: I love the country within which I was born. These people are my people. I don’t care what color they are—we are all Americans. We must have the application to stand up again.
Once I fought against the discriminatory laws in America but America was strong then. Now, she is weak. I only want to extend my fingers to pull it out of the quicksand, because that’s where it is. I have all the hope in the world, though. The storm will come; we can’t stop it. But that’s all right. America will still be—but it will be the America it was intended to be. We were a small train on the track. We fell off. We’ll get on again.
Gates: Where do you think the United States is heading, with distrust in government so apparent, with Watergate attracting worldwide attention?
Baker: America was the promised land. I just want to give them my spirit; they’ve lost the path. That makes me suffer. I was so unhappy in the United States; I saw my brothers and sisters so afraid. The problem is deep—it has long roots. It is basic. The soil must be purified, not only must the root be pruned. It makes me unhappy to think that—I wouldn’t be human if I weren’t made unhappy by that. Needlessly, people will suffer. They need someone who can give them more than money. Someone to offer his hand, not just his money.
Gates: Mr. Baldwin, do you think that Watergate is a new, a significant departure in American history, or do you think it is the logical extension of policies begun long before Nixon, before this century even?
Baldwin: Simply stated, Watergate was a bunch of incompetent hoods who got caught in the White House in the name of law and order.
Gates: Do you think the public hearings, indictments, and possible convictions could purge America, could allow it to change those things which you do not like about it?
Baldwin: America is my country. Not only am I fond of it, I love it. America would change itself if it could, if that change didn’t hurt, but people rarely change. Take the German people, for example. The German experiment during the war was catastrophic. It was a horror not to be believed. But they haven’t changed: the German nation is basically the same today as it was before the war.
In a different sense, it is easy to be a rebel at age eighteen; it is harder to be one at age twenty-five. A nation may change when it realizes it has to. But people don’t give up things. They have things taken away from them. One does not give up a lover; you lose her.
Gates: What do you see as the significance of Vietnam to America?
Baker: I won’t criticize America today. She is weak. I said all this years ago. It all came true. But it is never too late. It can be saved, but we Americans are so proud—false dignity, though. It’s nothing to be ashamed ab
out to acknowledge our mistakes; Vietnam was a mistake. All that money for no progress, that turned the whole world against America.
But actually, My Lai happened first with the Indians. We brought on our own enemies—nobody, no matter how powerful, needs enemies.
Gates: Did you ever regret that you had left the United States, or did you ever feel guilty, particularly during the Civil Rights Era, for not being there to participate?
Baker: Some of my own people called me an Uncle Tom; they said I was more French than the French. I’ve thought often about your question, about running away from the problem. At first, I wondered if it was cowardice, wondered whether I should have stayed to fight. But I couldn’t have done anything. I would have been thwarted in ways in which I was free in France. I probably would have been killed.
But really, I belong to the world now. You know, America represented that: people coming from all over to make a nation. But America has forgotten that. I love all people at the same time. Our country is people of all countries. How else could there have been an America? And they made a beautiful nation. Each one depositing a little of his own beauty.
It’s a sad thing to leave your country. How very often I’ve felt like the Wandering Jew with my twelve children on my arms. I’ve been able to bear it, though. It might be a mistake to love my country where brothers are humiliated, where they kill each other, but I do love it. We are a wealthy people, a cultivated people. I wish people there would love. They can’t go on like that. There’s going to be a horrible storm. It’s going to be a disaster. They’ll torture each other through hate. It’s ironic: people ran from slavery in Europe to find freedom in America, and now. . . .
Gates: Why don’t you return to live in America now; aren’t things a lot better for blacks?
Baker: I don’t think I could help America. I want to be useful, where I can help. America is desperate. In New York last year, I regretted for the first time not being young again. Young Americans need understanding and love. Children don’t want to hear words; they want to see examples, not words—not blah, blah, blah—profound love, without malice, without hate.
Gates: When did you eventually return to the United States and why?
Baker: It was in 1963; I kept reading about the “March on Washington,” about preparation for the march. I so much wanted to attend. But I was afraid they wouldn’t let me.
You see, for years I was not allowed to enter the United States. They said I was a Communist, during President Eisenhower’s administration. They would make a black soldier—to humiliate me—they would make a black soldier lead me from a plane to a private room. It was so terrible, so painful. But I survived.
Then, in 1963, we applied to President Kennedy for permission to go to the March on Washington. He issued me a permanent visa. I wore the uniform I went through the war with, with all its medals. Thank God for John Kennedy for helping me get into America.
They had humiliated me so much; but still, I love them as if nothing happened. They didn’t know what they were doing—digging their own grave through their hate. Then came Vietnam.
Gates: So you were actually forbidden to return to the United States between 1924 and 1963?
Baker: Yes. They said I was a Communist because I dared love—thrown out for preferring freedom to riches, feelings to gold. I am not to be sold; no one can buy me. I lost America; I had nothing in my pockets, but I had my soul. I was so rich. For all this, they called me a Communist. America drives some of its most sensitive people away. Take Jimmy Baldwin: he had to leave the States to say what he felt.
Gates: And what were your first impressions of life in “exile”?
Baldwin: I was no longer a captive nigger. I was the exotic attraction of the beast no longer in the cage. People paid attention. Of course you must realize that I am remembering the impression years later.
Gates: Did life abroad give you any particular insight into American society?
Baldwin: I realized that the truth of American history was not and had never been in the White House. The truth is what had happened to black people, since slavery.
Gates: What do you think characterized Europeans to make them more ready to accept you at a time when you felt uncomfortable living in America?
Baker: America has only been around for less than four hundred years; that’s not a long time, really. Apparently it takes more than that to realize that a human being is a human being. Europeans are more basic. They see colors of the skin as colors of nature, like the flowers, for example.
Gates: Did you find any difference between the manner in which French men and women viewed you as a black man?
Baldwin: That’s a very important question. Before the Algerian war, and that’s crucial in this, the black man did not exist in the French imagination; neither did the Algerian. After Dien Bien Phu, and after the “Civil War” as the French persist in calling it, there began to be a discernible difference between the way women and police had treated you before and after the war.
Gates: But were black Americans treated like Algerians were during their quest for independence?
Baldwin: Of course I was removed, but you became a personal threat as a black American. You were a threat because you were visible. The French became conscious of your visibility because of the Algerians. You see, the French did not and don’t know what a black man is. They’d like to put the blacks against the Algerians, to divide and rule, but the Arabs and black Americans were both slaves, one group was the slaves in Europe, the other back in America.
Gates: But surely you must believe that social change can come, that great men can effect change?
Baldwin: Change does come, but not when or in the ways we want it to come. George Jackson, Malcolm X—now people all over the world were changed by them. Because they told the secret; now, the secret was out.
Gates: And the secret?
Baldwin: Put it this way. In 1968, along with Lord Caradon (British Delegate to the United Nations then), I addressed an assembly of the World Council of Churches in Switzerland on “white racism or world community?” When Lord Caradon was asked why the West couldn’t break relations with South Africa, he brought out charts and figures that showed that the West would be bankrupt if they did that: the prosperity of the West is standing on the back of the South African miner. When he stands up, the whole thing will be over.
Gates: How do you assess the results of the war in Vietnam on the American people?
Baldwin: Americans are terrified. For the first time they know that they are capable of genocide. History is built on genocide. But they can’t face it. And it doesn’t make any difference what Americans think that they think—they are terrified.
Gates: From your vantage point, where do you think not only America but Western Civilization is heading?
Baldwin: The old survivals of my generation will be wiped out. Western Civilization is heading for an apocalypse.
SOURCE: Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “An Interview with Josephine Baker and James Baldwin.” The Southern Review 21, no. 3–4 (1985).
THE FUTURE OF AFRICA: SOYINKA AND GATES
THIS INTERVIEW WITH Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka was originally published in 2008 by The Root.com, where Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is editor in chief. This is a transcription of portions of the video interview.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.: How are Nigerians, and indeed other Africans, reacting to the candidacy of Barack Obama for the presidency of the United States?
Wole Soyinka: The fire, when I was in Nigeria lately, the fire has not caught on within the nation, but I can tell you that Nigerians in this country [the U.S.] are rooting like blazes for Obama. They’ve set up . . . I know those who contributed campaign funds up to the maximum that individuals are allowed to pay. I know that caucuses are there. They write to the campaign team. And no, no, the enthusiasm is very, very high there, high here [in the U.S.]. And it’s beginning to percolate into the mother continent.
Gates: How much of a difference do y
ou think the election of a black president will make to American policy towards Africa, or indeed to anything?
Soyinka: I don’t know about American policy towards Africa on its own, but in terms of world politics and the relationship of the United States to the rest of the world, I think that the election of Obama stands a chance of assisting the American nation to recover its prestige and its high regarding it once had, many, many years, many decades ago, so long ago I cannot remember, in the world. The idea of, not the descendant of a slave, but at least a descendant of a slave continent, rising to the pinnacle of power in the United States, it says something to the rest of the world, and even to the leadership of the rest of the world, about America on which many, many nations had given up ages ago. And Americans have been looked at with the kind of—no, it won’t be an immediate sense of respect, but there would be a new regarding. And there is the possibility, also, of a change of policies at a very high level in many troubled parts of the world, and I’m referring especially to the Middle East and the Arab World. Of course, there are also, there are some dictators who will be very alarmed by the possibility of an even more, of a liberal attitude towards things like democracy and so on and so forth, now championed, now championed by somebody of African descent. So there are those complexities which are very interesting to study, as it unravels. But I believe that, in the interest of the United States, I hope that, and others of the world, incidentally, that Obama gets the ticket.
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