June 7, 1963: 725

‘The Gulf’, Murray Kempton

Baldwin referenced at length in a piece about the meeting between Robert Kennedy and the group of “Negro” representatives led by Baldwin. The article is largely sympathetic to the group’s position:

“James Baldwin is, of course, a figure of fashion; … We dee in him the change in the American Negro as image of public fashion: Marian Anderson was endurance and calm; Baldwin is exhaustion and tension. He looks like a rag doll pulled on the one hand by a child who hates and pulled on the other by a child who loves. … it is to his lasting credit and the temporary credit of his listeners that he offers them nothing comfortable.”

Of the meeting between Robert Kennedy and the Negro representatives, the author says: “Painful as it was, Mr. Kennedy and all of us needed this confrontation. Only from failures this close to the reality can any hope of success be born.”