Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

Tried to commit suicide in 69.

So he was despairing, disillusioned.

But he had to pick up the pieces.

He had to bear witness.

Because he also saw the country elect Ronald Reagan.

And Reagan, for Black activists during this period, was as bad, if not worse, than George Wallace.

And they were calling him the Redeemer-in-Chief.

This was the man who led the hunt that destroyed the Black Panther Party.

This was the man who put Angela Davis in effect on the FBI most wanted list.

This was the man who despised the poor in California, as Baldwin put it.

He became the avatar of all of those who rejected and resisted the great society and the civil rights movement.

And the country elected him.

This B-list Hollywood actor, he was their latest fantasy.

Sounds like an echo.

We live in a moment similar.

And so Baldwin in that moment said the country had turned its back on it, on the possibility of being otherwise.

And so he had to figure out how to pick up the pieces so that we could push this damn boat up the hill again.

In 1970, an Ebony interviewer came to Istanbul while Baldwin was trying to pick up the pieces and working on No Name in the Street.

And he asked him about hope.

And Jimmy, who is barely keeping it together, although he's in a community of love, offers the advice that I found in the ruins and in the rubble that I offer us today.