To Fulfill the Unfulfilled, To Answer the Unanswered: The Revolutionary James Baldwin (2024)

James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 - December 1, 1987) was America’s greatest writer and arguably the greatest essayist in the history of the English language. While he is most often seen as a writer and cultural icon, he was however much more - a revolutionary theorist, and witness for the Black Freedom Movement. To understand Baldwin as such, it is crucial to understand the revolutionary chronology that produced Baldwin, which is rooted, not in the European revolutions of 1848 and the thought of Karl Marx and V. I. Lenin, but in the struggle against slavery and white supremacy.

"To Fulfill the Unfulfilled, To Answer the Unanswered: The Revolutionary James Baldwin" is an original documentary produced by The Saturday Free School for Philosophy and Black Liberation, that seeks to clarify the revolutionary chronology that leads to Baldwin's theorizing, and to establish him as a philosopher and revolutionary thinker who cannot be separated from Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Freedom Movement. This documentary was premiered on August 2nd, 2024, Baldwin's 100th birth anniversary, as part of a three-day celebration which included an Afro-Asiatic Peace Concert, and the inauguration of an exhibit titled "Love & Revolution : James Baldwin speaks to our time" at the central branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia (https://libwww.freelibrary.org/blog/post/5350)

Our nation faces a crisis of violence, mental illness, poverty, homelessness, and meaning. It is up to the people to heal society and determine our human future. Baldwin, the thinker and revolutionary, illuminates how we can do so. His writing is the autobiography of the making of a new American people. To the extent that we see ourselves in his words, we recognize that we must fulfill the unfulfilled task of completing the democratic, revolutionary, and emancipatory struggle; and, in Baldwin’s words, achieve our country.

We honor Baldwin as GOD'S REVOLUTIONARY VOICE: a literary, philosophical, cultural, artistic, and ideological genius, whose contributions to the revolutionary remaking of world humanity must be brought to fruition.

For more information about reading groups and events visit: YearOfJamesBaldwin.org