Happy 100th Birthday James Baldwin
Let's Celebrate Tonight with a Spontaneous "Mike's Movie Night" and Watch Raoul Peck's Documentary Masterpiece, the Oscar-Nominated I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO
Friends,
I woke up this morning and realized that today, August 2nd, is the 100th birthday of one of the greatest American writers and thinkers ever — James Baldwin. To honor him, we thought it’d be cool if we had an unplanned watch-party throughout the country, a spontaneous “Mike’s Movie Night” across America, where all of us together, in each of our homes, settled in to watch what I believe is one of the best documentaries of all time: Raoul Peck’s Oscar-nominated I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO.
The film is based on a 30-page book proposal Baldwin wrote in the final years of his life. He wanted to explore his close friendship with Martin Luther King, Jr., Medgar Evers and Malcolm X and how they helped shape his understanding of what it meant to be raised as a Black man in the United States of America. Peck, with the blessing of the Baldwin family, took those 30 pages and fashioned it into an amazing work of art to give James Baldwin his final say as to who we are and what we’ve become.
I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO is available for free for Hulu and Disney+ subscribers, and also free on Kanopy via participating libraries (using your library card). You can also rent the film on Prime, Apple, and other platforms.
I’m going to watch at 8pm ET tonight — join me from wherever you are, or frankly, watch it anytime tonight, tomorrow or this weekend.
When I’m done watching it tonight (probably around 9:35pmET), join me for a 20 min chat! For paid subscribers, I’ll be answering questions on a Live Chat Thread via the Substack App. You will be notified by Substack when the Thread is live. For free subscribers, I will open up the comment section below at 9:30pm to everyone, so write your questions/comments there! I will answer as many as I can.
Do not miss this movie! Especially during this historic week! If you’ve already seen it, gather the family, call a few friends, or share this with folks online and re-watch this masterpiece at this moment of the collective PANDEMONIUM we are all in! YES!
— Mike
Hello everyone! Michael Moore here. Once again thanks for joining me on the 100th birthday of James Baldwin. And thank you for sharing the evening with me as we watched this incredible film by the director Raoul Peck. I don't know how many times I've seen this, but each time I am as moved by it as the first time I saw it some nine years ago. I'm curious to hear your initial and immediate reactions... Please share...
LET AMERICA BE AMERICA AGAIN
by Langston Hughes
1935
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.
O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!