Nikki Giovanni Was A Revolution. Part One Of Her Conversation With James Baldwin, 1971
01:18:57 Share

Welcome to The Politocrat. I'm Omar Moore. It is Tuesday, December the 10th, 2024. On this edition of The Politocrat, a conversation between Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin, part one. After the passing of the legendary Nikki Giovanni yesterday,

Part one of a conversation that Nikki Giovanni had with James Baldwin back in 1971. What they were really talking about was 2025. All of that coming up next.

Dear listener, welcome to this brand new edition of the Politico Daily Podcast. I do hope you are well on this Tuesday, December the 10th, 2024. Yours truly, Omar Moore here with you after a few days off and also after a birthday that I enjoyed yesterday. Really great time had, great birthday wishes and all the rest. And I do hope that you are well and in good health and in good shape.

I think one of the sad things yesterday, there were two sad things yesterday that happened on my birthday. One of them was,

was the passing of Nikki Giovanni. The other one was the, as expected, verdict that saw Dan Penny, Daniel Penny, the white Marine, get off for killing a black man named Jordan Neely. We all saw it on video. He choked the life out of that brother for six and a half minutes when there was absolutely no need to do anything like that to this young brother. And

And he walked away to cheers in the courtroom, actually got cheers from family members and people in the courtroom when the not guilty verdict was announced on a criminally negligent homicide charge. It's just anyway, I'm going to talk about that another day. It's just the evil that persists in this country when you are guilty.

who is black dealing with white people and a white system that is anti-black and is racist and continues to perpetuate and perpetrate the evils and the violence against you that this system has for 400 plus years. I will get into the situation there with Daniel Penny and

Jordan Neely. I'll be talking about that on another episode. But I do want to talk about Nikki Giovanni. Nikki Giovanni passed away yesterday. And that was one of the really other sad moments of the moments for yesterday for me to know that she had passed away. And she had a battle with cancer. She was 81 years of age. She was somebody who

Wow, if you don't know Nikki Giovanni, who she was, I first of all urge you to go and look her up online and do your research. Her first name is spelled N-I-double-K-I, and her last name is Giovanni, G-I-O-V-A-double-N. Nikki Giovanni was a black liberation activist and came out of the black arts movement in the 1960s and into the 70s. She is somebody who...

I think, was one of the most preeminent scholars in black arts movement, black liberation, and in activism. She really was. She was a poet. She was an author, a writer, an educator, a griot, you know, storyteller. She was somebody who was a very compelling figure. And

a figure who really believed in black power, a person who believed in black power and black liberation. And she was such a vital figure in that movement. I really can't think of anyone else. Now, I know there's Sonia Sanchez, but I can't really think of anyone else. I mean, to a degree also, and now I just forget her name, the sister who passed away a few years ago now,

who's also a scholar. I can't believe it. And I've got her books here. Begins with the letter B. Her first name begins with the letter B. It's incredible. I don't want to look it up and I don't want to walk over to the bookshelf

and try to get this book. I want to remember. I'll try to remember her name. But you know who I'm talking about. And she would not capitalize the first letter of her name. Now, so you know who I'm talking about. I can't, because you know, when you get older, especially after you've just had a birthday, you know, your memory just gets worse and worse. That's a spoiler alert for those of you who aren't in the kind of age group that I'm in. But those of you who are older know what I'm talking about.

But I will get the person's name and I will try to remember it because I'm that stubborn. But the bottom line is there are very few people, I can't think of anyone, who had the kind of gravitas, the kind of impact that Nikki Giovanni had. You know, she educated so many people. She was true to the cause of black liberation.

And through the arts, black arts movement, she knew a number of figures. She was tremendous. Somebody who, well, you just have to read her writings. Her writings were astonishing. And I mean that, and not astonishing, shocking, but really just hit you. They were just right on, right on time. She was so clear and so precise and

In her work, in her voice, her voice was really pure and distinct and so strong and in a really fervent way. I just loved who she was and what she brought to the table. And she was a really well, I mean, I thought she was one of the, put it this way, Nikki Giovanni didn't play around.

She was right. This sister was really on and on from day one. Now, the only other person I can really think of who had the kind of impact and maybe more impact than Nikki Giovanni in terms of scholarship and authorship and impact and leadership and philosophy and activism was Nikki, was the person that she's going to talk to, James Baldwin. James Baldwin is one of the people who I would say,

And I'm not trying to be hierarchical. I'm only trying to set up the conversation that I'm going to play you part one of in a few moments time, which is just under an hour long, what you're about to hear in a few moments. But Nikki Giovanni, please look her up. I think it does kind of a disservice for me to even try to categorize and encapsulate someone's

who had such a breadth of scholarship and writing and poetry and activism as she did. She was such a key figure in the Black Arts Liberation Movement and the Black Arts Struggle and in the Black Struggle at the time in the 60s and in the 70s and beyond the 1970s. Nikki Giovanni continued to educate and to write

to teach well up into the later stages of her life and again when she passed away yesterday it was a tremendous tremendous loss to the world not just to the United States. Nikki Giovanni is going to be well remembered fondly remembered and you're going to hear Nikki Giovanni right now

her conversation with the brother James Baldwin. These are two of the great titans of the Black liberation struggle and the Black movement. And you're going to hear from them right now. This is part one.

of a conversation that took place between Nikki Giovanni, who at the time was 28 years of age, and James Baldwin, who at the time was 48 years of age. So this is really a conversation between two generations. And one of them, I think both of them, well, one of them, both of them were really baby boomers. Although James Baldwin was before baby boomer time, in a way. But you're going to be hearing...

A conversation between two generations. As I said, Nicky Bolden, Nicky Bolden. Nicky Giovanni was 28. James Bolden was 48. This conversation you're about to hear part one of took place in London in 1971. And at the time, James Bolden had been in Paris and in Nice. And Nicky Giovanni had been living in the United States of America. Nicky Giovanni was born into the Deep South.

James Baldwin was born in Harlem, USA. And so you're going to hear from them right now. Now, again, this conversation took place in 1971 in London, and it could have taken place just yesterday, as far as I'm concerned, because

They really are talking about the here and now. And that's what makes, obviously, a conversation like that that you are about to hear timeless. It really, really does. They are talking right now, Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin, about 2025. It really is. And let me say to you, they're probably having a conversation right now.

as they are both ancestors. Nikki Giovanni became an ancestor yesterday at the age of 81 after a protracted fight with cancer. And let me warn you that you will be hearing some racist epithets during the course of this conversation and some graphic descriptions as well. Here now is part one, uninterrupted, of a two-part conversation

between Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin. You're about to hear a host introduce that conversation right now. Good evening. I'm Ellis Hayslip, and I welcome you to another Soul episode.

One of the miracles of this universe that we deal with is the way it can use something as cold and gray and as impersonal as an electron. These electrons that fill your television screen to bring you an experience as warm and as rich and as human as the program you're about to see.

and we here at Soul are extremely proud that we have been able to put together two programs, conversations between two brilliant and eloquent members of the black family, Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin. We had to travel to London in order to tape these programs, and we then edited them to fit within our time schedule of one hour. Tonight you will be seeing the first hour of this conversation, and next week we will air the second part.

Mr. Baldwin, who is now living abroad, is the author of Going to Meet the Man, Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, The Fire Next Time, Another Country, Nobody Knows My Name, Giovanni's Room, Notes of a Native Son, Go Tell It on the Mountain, and A Rap on Race with Margaret Mead. James Baldwin is also the author of the plays Blues for Mr. Charlie and The Amen Corner.

Nikki, as most of our viewers know, is an old friend of souls and one of quite a few beautiful people who has always made her time, energy, and thinking available to us. She is the author of Black Feeling, Black Talk, Black Judgment,

Recreation, Gemini, and Spin a Soft Black Song. She also edited an anthology of black female voices titled Night Comes Softly. So here now are Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin in conversation. Jimmy, I'm really curious. Why did you move to Europe? Well...

When did I... Why or when? Why? I think I know when. I moved to Europe in so far as one can say I did. I moved to Europe first in 1948 because I was trying to become a writer and couldn't find in my surroundings, in my country, a certain stamina, a certain corroboration that I needed.

For example, no one ever told me that Alexander Dumas was a mulatto. No one told me that Pushkin was black. And as far as I knew when I was very, very young, there had never been anything, as far as my father knew, which is much more important, there had never been anything called a black rider. You know? So when I was 24, I split. I came to Paris and worked and went home in 57.

and worked and stayed and was based in New York, really, in and out, because I was... Work is, on the one hand, making speeches and on the other hand, trying to write, you know. And I never was able to write in New York, so I would go out and do my work and come back and do my work, if you see what I mean. Yeah, I understand. And that all ended in a way, or something else began after Martin Luther King was murdered, and I spent a long time in limbo. At the moment, I'm based in the south of France, but there's no way ever to leave America.

you know, I would be a fool to think that there was someplace I could go where I wouldn't be carrying myself with me or there was somewhere for me to live if I pretended I didn't have the responsibilities which in fact I do have. So I'm in a way just living, I'm a cat trying to make it in the world because I'm condemned to live in the world. Condemned? Condemned in the sense that when you're young and also when you're old, you

who would rather, you know, have around you, you know, the expected things, you know, to know where everything is, you know. And it's a little difficult, but it's very valuable to be forced to move from one place to another and deal with another set of situations all of the time and to accept that this is going to be, it is, your life and to use it, you know. It means you, in a sense, become neither white nor black, you know, and you learn a great deal about...

You're forced to learn a great deal about the history out of which all these words and conceptions and flags and marladons come. There's something that eventually I'm sure we're going to hit.

So we're just going to have to work it out. All right. Okay, but let's start, let's say, with Everybody's Protest Novel, which I think came out in 48. It came out in 49, 48, 49, something like that, yes. When I was six. Jesus. I thought it was magnificent pieces. I went to first grade. I said, my God, somebody's really talking. How do you stand in relationship, say, to that novel now? To that Everybody's Protest Novel, that essay now? What do you think about, let's say, the younger writers of which I am one?

And within that context, are we, in your opinion, moving ahead? Are we moving out of that basic set of assumptions? Oh, I think it's very difficult for me to say it. You know, it can be misunderstood. But you have no idea, and I can never express to you to what extent I depend on you. Or, I mean, you, Nikki Giovanni, and also, I mean, your generation. My generation, yeah. You know, I can even say you have no idea, and I can never express that either.

Because in a way I have no right to say it, but I'm very proud of you. Something has moved. Things move in a very strange way and maybe inexpressible. If I wrote that essay today, for example, I would be writing a very different essay out of a very different kind of problem. I think that without quite realizing it, and no matter what our hang-ups are as of this very moment, the hang-up of my generation or the hang-up of your generation, you know, and the terrible situation in which all of us find ourselves...

It is, one thing has changed and that is the attitude that black people have toward themselves. Now, within that change, and I want to be romantic about it, a great deal of confusion and coherence, you know, will go on for a very long time, you know, but that was inevitable. That moment had to come too, you know, and everybody's put us now what I was trying for myself, after all, first of all, to elucidate for myself that

of theology and the effects of a theology which i at that moment realized i carried in myself you know it's not the world that was my oppressor only because what the world does to you is the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough you begin to do it to yourself you become a collaborator an accomplice of your own murderers because you believe the same things they do you know you think it's they think it's important to be white and you think it's important to be white they think it's shameful to be black and you think it's shameful to be black

And you have no corroboration around you of any other sense of life. All those corroborations which are around you are, in terms of the white majority standards, so deplorable, they frighten you to death. You don't eat watermelon. You get so rich you can't dance. You can hardly move by the time you're 14. You're always scrubbed and shining.

you know a parody of god knows what because no white person has been you know as clean as you have been forced to become and you got somehow to begin to break out of all of that and try to become yourself you know it's hard for anybody but it's very hard if you're born black in a white society hard because you've got to divorce yourself from the standards of that society the danger of your generation if i may say so

No, but we will pursue this language. No, no, no. It's to substitute one romanticism for another. You know, because in fact, these categories are, to put it just simply, but, you know, with a certain brutal truth, these categories are commercial categories. It's true. You know, there is a reason that when you and I were slaves, my son produced out of your body was by definition a slave. But the master's son also produced out of your body, depending on his color.

If he was light enough, he could be, he could live in the big house. And if he wasn't, he took his condition of the condition of his mother. He was still a slave. He was a slave. He was a slave. He was a slave because even though he might be the master's son, the master could make money off of his son. The whole institution was threatened. A slave woman could produce a free man. Of course. And the dilemma begins there. Did you see what I mean?

I don't see why it's a dilemma. If a slave woman could produce a free man, that means anything to me. A slave woman was forbidden by law, I said the reasons are commercial, to produce a free man. Because once you have a free man out of the body of a slave, you no longer have a slave. It's true. But it's very hard to recognize that the standards which have almost killed you are really mercantile standards. They're based on cotton, they're based on oil, they're based on peanuts, they're based on profits.

To this day. To this hour. Yeah. Which the church sanctifies. But the church is commercial. It's when you begin to realize all of that, you know, which is not easy, that you begin to break out of the culture which has produced you and discover the culture which really produced you. You see what I mean? What really brought you where you are. When you're in trouble, when I'm in trouble, I do not sing...

A Doris Day at Tin Pan Alley tune, you know, you find yourself humming and moaning, you know, something which your great-grandfathers did. No, that has to do with us. And what it's all about is the attempt now to excavate something which has been buried, you know, which you contain and I contain, and which your kid contains, and which has got to carry...

which one has to hand down the line for the sake of your kid and for the sake of future generations and even for the sake of white people who have not the notice idea what this means because we have the edge over the people who think of themselves as white and that we have never been deluded into knowing into believing what they believe and that sounds like a contradiction yeah you know but in fact you watch man you work for you have to watch him you don't know you're watching him you're watching him but you're watching him but he's not watching you he thinks he knows who you are or what you are

You don't know who he is because your life is in his hands. And you have to watch him because if you don't watch him, you're going to live from Monday till Tuesday. It's as simple as that. And without knowing you know him, you know him. He can't fool you.

I'm not at all... I mean, the civil rights movement, I came up in the 60s, which is like way after everybody else. But we always assumed that we knew white people, you know what I mean? That we really sort of like understood them. And I found out that if you don't understand yourself, you don't understand anybody else. And all you know, you know what I mean, with a snake is to watch a snake. And you know it's a snake, but you don't know it. That's right. That's right. You know what I mean? That's right. Because there's too much between, there's too much emotion.

There's so much fear. I can watch like the cat I work for. You know what I mean? He's going to watch me to some extent. But we know each other. I would say, I would hypothesize that he knows me better because his game is running. Mine's not. And that's what I've sort of always disagreed with your generation on. As long as his game is running, he obviously knows me because he's, I'm playing. You understand? He said jump and I'm saying ha ha. He knows me. You may be right, but I would put it another way. I would put it, I would suggest that since his game is running, he hasn't got to know you.

Because this game is running. You're part of the game, he's running. He hasn't got to know you. I would think that one of the reasons that the Americans are in such trouble now is because the game is running. It was running up until only yesterday, really. Would you believe today? And all of a sudden, through the American astonishment, the Americans have suddenly discovered that people in the world don't like them. Yeah. Now, I always knew that.

Because I didn't like them. You know, I love some. They're not likable. Well, there's two people that are likable. But they ain't likable. There's two people in the world that's not likable, a master and a slave. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Exactly. You see? Exactly. You know, we will never, never, never, never get, you know, get precise categories for that very loaded statement. You know, but that is where the truth is. How did you like them? So the question, I mean, for me, the question has always been power. Yes. And...

For like you all the question has been morals, you know, I never wanted to be the most moral person in the world I agree. I would like I mean I would sell my soul. You know what I mean? What is the profit of man to gain the world and lose it? So the world you know, I mean the world that's what a prophet I know so you take the soul, you know Give me the world

You know, even though it's losing 25% of its energy every 100 years or something ridiculous. Oh, please, don't believe all this. Don't believe everything you hear. No, but I'm saying it's not my concern, you know? I know. Even though it's polluted, ugly, dirty, give it to me. Speaking... Or let me tell you. I will take it. But speaking... I agree with you. I agree with you. But speaking for myself, but also speaking as representative of my generation. Mm-hmm. But it's probably safer to speak only for myself, really. Yeah.

I know that in my own case, what I felt, and still feel, perhaps in a different way, but what I felt very strongly in the years, for example, when I was one of you all, when Martin came down those dusty highways with Martin. Look, I left the church when I was 17 years old. I've not really been to a church since, except when I had to go for various fundraising rallies or this or that. And I was not exactly the kind of Christian that Martin was, if I could be described as Christian at all.

It's hard to be the kind of Christian he is. But I liked him. I loved him, in fact. And I knew that something was happening through him. And my concern was, yes, the world. But I'd seen what white people had done to the world. And I'd seen what white people had done to their children. You know, because in gaining the world, they had lost something. A lot. No, they'd lost the ability to love their own children. The ability to love themselves. Which is the same thing, you know.

And I didn't want that to happen, if I may say so, to you. It was not a matter of morals so much. It was a matter of being forced in my own case to suggest, to keep suggesting that though it was indeed a matter of power, power without, the word morals is misleading, power without some sense of oneself. It's simply another kind of sterility. And the black people would then become exactly what white people have become.

you know what i mean yeah there's a danger you know i also accept this that that danger is not is not up to me to tell anybody how to run you know i can only speak as as what i am i'm a kind of poet and if i'm a kind of poet and i'm responsible from my own point of view to the people who produce me and the people who will come after me you know so that when the holocaust comes

and it will come, you know, eventually. Eventually, no matter how simple black and white terms may be today, life is not that simple. And sooner or later, if I do my work as I should do it, when I'm needed, I'll be there. You know what I mean? I don't know if the people listening, I know what you mean.

Because I think the most important, I think that I do, because I think the most important thing for any of us is when what comes, or when what we know will come, comes, that we have the strength to say, yeah, it came. That's right, it came. And I'm going to stay in my apartment on 94th and you'll be your niece, but we'll say yeah. And we'll also be able to ride out the storm, but what is more important is not so much the riding out of the storm for you, Nicky, or me, Jimmy. But in my mind's eye, there's always that kid. He's going to be here when you're gone. Oh, yeah.

You know, when I am long gone, and my point of view is, it is about the children. It is about the children. We have to give the children something, which in a way was after all given to us, though we had to learn how to translate it. Because your kid will be moving in a very different world than the one in which I grew up, which you won't know anything about at all, or the one in which you grew up, which will be remote for him. And yet he comes out of it, and he's got to carry it much further than you or I will be able to carry it.

He's got to have respect for it, but not be trapped by it. Precisely. You had to both give it to him and liberate him from it. And I think that kind of thing has been lacking. Like, I think one of the nicest things that...

we created almost as a generation and it wasn't us because Martin Delaney and those people were way before us but just the fact that we could say hey I don't like white people it's a great generation it was a beginning of of course being able to like them exactly which of course upsets them but that's their problem yeah but their problem really is a kind of we were talking earlier before the show began about the kind of incomprehension in somebody's face trying to describe what is to you a very simple situation like people don't like going to jail

and you see the man's face and he looks astonished. What? People don't like going to jail. And then you pull back. You know, does that really go on? And you live with this all your life. And what you watch is that he knows it really. He doesn't think that you know it. He doesn't think anybody will tell him. And if it comes in, as we were saying earlier, if he allows that to enter into his guts...

He's a very different person. He may be, it may, he may explode. There's no wobble happen if he allows this apprehension of someone else's experience enter into him. Right. Because he's perpetuating his experience. And this is the crisis of the age. This is what Malcolm really meant when he said that white is a state of mind. Okay. You know. On a certain level, because I tend to be parochial in one thing.

And I tend to care about Afro-Americans, which I would define as the sons and daughters of slaves and slave owners. You know what I mean? That doesn't, by the way, sound very parochial to me. It's very parochial because I don't care about my third-row brothers and sisters and things like that that I'm sure I should.

But as we... You mean you're responsible for a certain situation? I just can't deal with it. Yes, I know. I think that if everybody dealt with their own little situation, if I deal with my block and you deal with your block, we'll have two good... And Malcolm said that too. Yeah. So when we deal with white as being like a state of... Well, Malcolm said everything, which I would grant. No, really? I mean, he encompassed. But as we begin to try to deal, you know what I mean, with the world, we find that a lot of things break down. And we find that frequently a white face...

goes with a white mind. Occasionally, a black face goes with a white mind. Very seldom, a white face will have a black mind. But we find the frequent situation is a white face has a white mind. You know what I mean? So for the few mistakes that you would make, it's unfortunate. No, I know. To me, it's unfortunate. I wouldn't argue that at all. I wouldn't argue that at all. It doesn't make any difference to me. A cop is a cop.

Well, cops are white. And he may be a very nice man, but I haven't got time to figure that out. All I know is he's got a uniform and a gun. And I have to relate to him that way. That's the only way to relate to him at all.

Because one of us may have to die. You know, in New York, there's a big campaign going on to humanize the policemen. And they have billboards upstate. And they have a picture of this big cop bending over this little blonde girl. And the signs say, and some people call him Pig. And I wanted to buy a billboard. I told a friend of mine, I want to buy a billboard and show this big cop and this 14-year-old kid with 30 bullets in him and say some people call him Peacemaker.

You know? You had to do one thing. One thing Lorraine Hansberry said, get this photograph. When we had that famous meeting with Bobby Kennedy, Lorraine said to Bobby, who was also dead. Everybody's dead. You know? Lorraine said to Bobby, it answers something about black manhood. Jerome Smith had been talking about black men. And Lorraine said she wasn't worried about black men because they'd done very well, things considered. She was very proud of them. But she told Bobby, she said, I'm very upset about the state of that civilization which produced...

That photograph of that white cop in Birmingham standing on that black woman's neck, you know? Yeah. What does that say for white manhood? But again, that's a moral position. Well, we can't... If you follow what I mean by moral. Yeah, I do. I do. I do. That means that we're on top of the situation by being on the bottom. And many of us would like to see it the other way around. I'm not quite that romantic or even if you want to use the word moral, quite that moral. I simply know, I think I know. You know?

Look, I'm not a financier. You know, I'm not a banker. I'm not a practical man, so to speak, you know. I'm what I am. And I know the choices I've had to make in my own life to be able to shave in the morning, to look myself in the face in the morning. Now, I'm not so moral as to sit here and say that if somebody had a gun pointed at my brother's head, that I would pray for him, you know.

I'm not about to tell you, you know, that I'm lighting candles every day and every night for the soul of J. Edgar Hoover, you know. On one level, I'm not moral at all. I don't care what happens to Hoover and all his tribe at all. But I do care what happens to you, you know. And if I am moral, which I don't really think I am, but it's a word that you keep bringing up,

I just found another word for it. I know, I know. But the relationship between morality and power is a very subtle one. You know? Because power, ultimately with no morality, is not any longer power. You cannot call Spain a powerful nation. You cannot call Franco a powerful man. He's got a whole nation in jail. But that's not power. No.

You know what I mean? Exactly. His game isn't running. Precisely. Precisely. Now, when our game starts running, and after all, after all, baby, we have survived the roughest game in the history of the world. Yeah. You know, we really have. No matter what we say against ourselves, no matter what our limits and hang-ups are, you know, we have come through something. You know, and if we can get this far, we can get further. You know, and we got this far by means which no one understands, including you and me.

We're only beginning to apprehend it, and you're a poet precisely because you are beginning to apprehend it and put it into a form, you know, which will be useful for your kid and his kid, you know, and for the world. Because we're not obliged to accept the world's definitions. Just because white people say they're white, we're not obliged to believe it, you know.

Just because the Pope says he's a Christian, we're not obliged to believe it. It would be crazy if we did. We have to make our own definitions and begin to rule the world that way. Because kids, white and black, cannot use what they have been given. And they're rejecting it. They're rejecting it. Nobody wants to become the president of Pan Am or the governor of California or Spiritu Agnew. The kids want to live, you know. And we have...

out of a terrifying suffering a certain sense of life which everybody needs you know and that's morality for me you know use the word morals i would use the word energy okay you see what i mean i can follow that yeah you know it's a very mysterious endeavor isn't it you know because the key is love it's just it's hard to figure out black people

No, really. I mean, you know. You know. I know. It's very hard because you say, let's say somebody like you, you've been out of the church for a long time, okay? I grew up, of course, in a Baptist church. And I really dig the church. I do, too. I think it's a very cool. I do, too. I can't dig the theology, but the music and the energies of the church. Yes. But then I went to the New York Community Choir. I had its anniversary recently, its first anniversary. And I went up to an AME Zion church, as a matter of fact.

And the lady was singing, some lady was singing, Yes, Jesus Loves Me. And people started shouting. You know what I mean? Yes, Jesus. People were shouting. And it hit me as I was sitting there. My God, as a so-called black militant, I have nothing stronger to offer than Jesus. Yeah, but you see. Yeah, but you, baby. And that was a mind. It blew. As a matter of fact, I went up to church and said, Ain't that a bitch? As a man that was testifying. It blew my mind. Baby, what we did with Jesus was,

was not supposed to happen. You know, at all. I can believe that, yeah. We took that cat over and made him ours. It was nothing but whatever to do with that white Jesus in Montgomery, Alabama, that white church. We did something else with him. We made him ours. Some of you in us knew he was always really a nigger because, you know, Swedes don't come from Israel. You know, you had to be fairly dark. Well, white people really deal more with God and black people more with Jesus. No, they don't even deal with God.

You know, they don't deal with God. They deal with... God, for them, seems to be some metaphor for purity and for safety. You know? The whole heart of the Christian legend has always been, in some sense, impressive as being, you know, really obscene. And it's the key to all the dirty jokes which come afterwards. You know, can you imagine what would happen to you, Nikki? I'm married to you. I go out to work. I come home, and you say to me, Baby, you know what happened today? I said, No, what happened? Well, you know, the Holy Ghost came by. Oh, he did, did he? Ha ha ha!

And, um, Joe, you know, the Holy Ghost whispered in my ear and I'm pregnant. Now, I might... I don't think you'd go for it. I might, you know, I might look a little hard at you. If I were really vulnerable, I might try to find that cat, the Holy, the Holy, the Holy who? The Holy who? The Holy Ghost. This...

Has been believed by millions of people. Yeah, they really did. Who lived and died by it for 2,000 years. And when you attack it, you're accused of being blasphemous. I think the legend itself is a blasphemy. What is wrong with a man and a woman sleeping together, making love to each other, and having a baby like everybody else? It's true. Why does the Son of God got to be born immaculately? Aren't we all the sons of God? That's a blasphemy.

But we're not all the sons of God. Well, it depends on what you mean by God. Depends on who's doing it. I've claimed him as my father. And I'll give him a great, great battle between now and the time until it's over. Because God is our responsibility. Well, I agree with that. A lot of people don't realize, they think that we are God's responsibility. No, no, no. But it's one of him and what, 30 million of us. That's right. And God's only hope is us. That's true. Yeah.

If he don't make it, he ain't gonna make it either. Now, people are funny about sex, which I never understood. Well, they're terrified of it. Same way that people are... It's not about sex, either. It's not about sex. You know, sex is... Sex is not really the problem. Love is the problem. You know, when you're a kid, when you're a 16-year-old boy, 15-year-old boy, you know...

What does he want really? He wants release. - A 15-year-old girl. - Yes, you know. And there's nothing at that moment yet to do really with love, because love is something which comes much later, really. You know, a kid loves you in a certain way because he needs you. But later on when you're a man or a woman, it has to be much more reciprocal. You love somebody because you need each other. But this is not... One's not capable of this idea, you know, when you're 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, when everything is sexual.

and everything is being discovered, you know? That's why so many of our kids turn into junkies, which we won't go into at the moment. We'll come back to it, you know? But the great question is not that. The great question is, you see, it seems to me that the black male, the situation of the black male is in microcosm, the situation of the Christian world. The price of being a black man in America, God bless you. Sorry. It's all right. It's the weather.

The price you had to pay, the price you're expected to pay, and which you have to outwit, is your sex. You know, a black man is forbidden by definition, since he's black, to assume the roles, the burdens, the duties, and the joys of being a man. In the same way that my child, Bruce, in your body did not belong to me, but to the master. He could be sold at any moment. Okay. You know what I mean? And this erodes a man's sexuality. When you erode a man's sexuality, you destroy his possibility to love anybody.

You know, though sex and love are not the same thing, if a man's sexuality is gone, then his possibility, his hope of loving is also gone. You know, he has no way to express it. He has absolutely no floor on which to dance, no room in which to move, no way to get from one day to the next. Because to make love to you is not the same thing as taking you, you know. And it's a journey which both people have got to make with each other.

But why do black men, why do we allow this to happen? Look, when one begins to talk about, when I begin to talk about the situation of black men, I mean, anyone, I'm nearly 50, so that I've got to avoid sounding, you know, in any way defensive because... No, no. No, I don't mean that I think you're attacking me, but you ask me a question which I'm trying to answer as honestly as I can, I have to look back over my own life, you know. And you save yourself...

If you have any sense at all, and if you're lucky enough, you know if you lose your center, and let's say the center is your sex, if you lose that, if you allow that to be destroyed, then everything else is gone. And you have to figure out a way of saving it from the landlord. After all, I had to watch my father and what my father had to endure to raise nine children on $27.50 a week when he was working.

Now, when I was a kid, I didn't know what the man was going through at all. I didn't know why he was always in a rage. I didn't know why he was impossible to live with. But I had not had to go through yet his working day. And he couldn't quit his job because he had the kids to feed. You know, he couldn't say as, you know, as our kids can, I don't like white people. He couldn't say anything. He lived his whole life in silence, except in the church.

You know? And they couldn't explain it. How can you explain to a five-year-old kid, you know, my boss called me a nigger and I quit. And the kid's belly's empty and you see it. You know? And you gotta raise the kid. You know, you've got to raise the kid. And your manhood is being slowly destroyed hour by hour, day by day. Your woman's watching it. You're watching her watch it. You know? And the love that you have for each other

His being to be destroyed hour by hour and day by day is not her fault, it's not your fault, but there it goes because the pressures under which you live are inhuman. My father finally went mad, and I understood when I became a man how that could happen. It wasn't that he didn't love us, he loved us. It wasn't that he didn't love his wife, our mother. He loved her, but he couldn't take it. Day after day and hour after hour, being treated like a nigger.

on that job and in those streets and on those subways and then coming home to his children who didn't understand him at all who were moving further and further away from him because they were afraid of him and also, which is even worse, afraid of the situation, the condition which he represented. He was, after all, for a kid, you begin to see when you're called a nigger, you look at your father because you think your father can rule the world. Every kid thinks that, you know, and your father cannot do anything about it.

And then you begin to despise your father and you realize, oh, that's what a nigger is. And it's not your father's fault. And it's not your fault. It's the fault of the people who hold the power. Because they have deliberately trained your father to be a slave. And they deliberately calculated that if he is a slave, you will be a slave. You will also accept it. And it will go on forever. And slavery will last a thousand years. Which the slaveholders said and believed. And now the bill is in. And they want...

from me or from you sympathy and understanding i understand it all too well and i have all the sympathy in the world for that spiritual disaster but i have no pity the bill is in we paid it now it's your turn it's a it's like a funny situation to be in because like we were poor but maybe unfortunately for somebody like me not poor enough to relate to it in that you know

We had enough to eat like that. Things like that. So that my relationship to that whole syndrome, which remains true, I'm 28 to this day, is that I really don't understand it. I don't understand how one hand, you say you're talking about like a black man, that he can be nothing in the streets and so fearful in his home. That he can be brutalized by some white person somewhere and then come home and treat...

You know what I mean? Me, my mother, the same way that he was being treated, which perpetuates. I mean, you take somebody like me. I'm not married, right? Yes, but Nikki. I couldn't play my mother. Yes, I know. You know what I mean? I just couldn't deal with it. I said, no, no, no, this won't work. But Nikki, it's also true. Since your mother played that role, you haven't got to. I couldn't. But you haven't got to. That's the point. Because she did. But her mother did. Yes. You know what I mean? Yes, but that's how we got here.

What I really am trying to say is I don't want us to underestimate the price paid for us. I have a great deal of respect for those people, for my parents, for people that I don't know, for the whole, you know, everybody who's shuffled. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that it's a phenomenon to me how you could be mistreated and then come home and mistreat someone the same way. First of all, Nikki, first of all, Nikki, you say mistreated or I say mistreated. No.

But in the mind of the person who is doing it, he's not mistreating you. Well, I'm not dealing with that. I mean, let's not for a minute. Let's say in the mind of, let's say, your father, who is just an example of the mind of my father. You know what I mean? He is being mistreated. I'm not going to deal with the crack that is mistreating him. I'm going to deal with him. He knows that he is not being treated with the respect due him as a person, as a black man.

Okay. In order to like get that together, when he comes into that house, he begins to like brutalize my mother, for example. You see what I mean? Which becomes like a phenomenon to me because I don't like white people and I'm afraid of black men, right?

If you could follow what I'm saying without anybody writing a letter and saying, sister, you know what I mean? Okay, so what do you do? Listen, you have to, I think... It's a cycle. Of course it is, but you see, this is one of the reasons I don't protest, but try to make clear that the words white and black don't mean anything. You know, a man comes home. He is in a situation which he cannot control. He is a human being. It's got to come out somewhere.

A poor Puerto Rican several years ago, for example. No. It's just... It's alleged. But I can see if this happened, why it happened. Cat came home, and the three-month-old baby was screaming, you know, as babies do. And he killed it. He didn't mean to kill it. He picked up and threw it against the wall. Yeah, I mean... He didn't mean to kill it. It wasn't that. I understand, you know, because I've been there. I know something about that. I don't know if it happens to a woman, but it happens to a man. You know...

You cannot do anything. They got you. They got you. They got you by the throat and by the balls. And of course it comes out. It comes out. Where would it come out? It comes out in the person closest to you. I was going to say that's so wrong because what you perpetuate... Nikki, it may be wrong. I hate to use those kind of terms. Nikki, it may be wrong. Of course it's wrong. But we're dealing with human beings.

You know, when can I be romantic about human nature? When can I be romantic about one's own nature? I don't think that I'm romantic. No, I don't mean that you are. I have seen how the community, and even today in 1971...

even today there are divisions based on those same kind of problems so that the black men say in order for me to be a man you walk 10 paces behind me you know what i mean it means nothing i can walk 10 paces behind the dog it means nothing to me but if that's what he needs i'll never get far enough behind him for him to be a man you know what i mean i'll never walk that slowly look nikki if at the risk of

There's a very great risk of pulling, seeming to pull rank. Oh. You know. Pull rank. I'm not. Go on. I'm not. No, I don't mean that. What I do mean is that, what I do mean is that a great many things which seem, if I may say so, new to you are not new to me. Okay. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So I can say then, okay, I see what the cat's doing. I can tell you almost exactly how long he will do it. You know. I know...

that a great deal of what passes for black militancy right now is nothing but a fashion. At best. You know, at best. Something will rest. Something will remain. What is important about it is not the details, not the giving people, you know, the given so-called leaders, any of that jazz, you know. What is important is the impulse out of which it has come, the ferment out of which it has come, which it reveals to. And what's valuable in it will remain and the rest will go.

You know what I mean? Yeah, but again, what's sort of sad to me is that the same syndrome that, say, our fathers set up, coming from...

Many, you know what I mean? My father is your age. And the same syndromes that they set up, well, you know, he's a little bit older, 55. A little bit older, 55. Thank you, baby. Well, seven years old. The same syndromes which is being set up, is being perpetuated, is that once again, the black man is becoming the figure to slide away from.

You know what I mean? That once again, the black man is the figure that you say, well, I can't handle that. And if you visit with the states or you talk to people enough, you'll see that that same syndrome, you know, the little guys that are standing around crossing their arms, they're not lovable. They're not giving any love. They could give a damn about me. You know what I mean? And that's unfortunate because I need love. Yes, but sweetheart, sweetheart.

Mm-hmm.

You know, you couldn't carry a tomb from here to here, right? Why Christmas? Right? It's true. Now I watch this little white boy become a millionaire. Become a millionaire. Many times over, I can't get a job. And time goes on. You get older. You get more weary. And since you cannot get a job, your morale begins to be destroyed. And the body begins to fail you.

your death approaches, or because being a man, you've never been able to execute what a man ought to be able to do. And it's not anything that you have done or not done by some arbitrary sentence. How in the world, if I can't get a job, if I can't even get my axe out of the pawn shop, if I can't even get money to get on the subway, how am I going to love anybody?

Except in such an awful pain and rage that nobody could bear it. I'm not trying to defend it. I'm trying to make you see it. You see what I mean? I do, but because maybe I'm hopeful. Or because I've structured my life in a way that I won't... I don't, by the way, think that what I'm describing...

is any longer true for your generation. I don't mean that. But I see the same, what I keep saying is that I see the same syndromes in the same guys that I have to deal with now. Yes, but my dear, my dear, what you have to see is also, look, think about the kid. Think about the kid. What you're going through is one thing, and I'm not trying to minimize it.

I'm not trying to mean... I'm not trying to... I don't even mean you personally. Yeah, I know. The generation is not... Yes. I don't mean... No, I don't mean... I don't mean you, Nikki, exactly. No, I hope that nobody... I'm not talking about me that much. No, no. I know. I know. But what I do mean is that simply assume for the moment... The kid is a useful metaphor because it carries you past one moment... Into the next. Into another moment. Because no matter what happens to me or to you, one's responsibility is...

somewhere else so so it's a terrible tuesday and a wretched friday but you know you still the kid don't know that and then you begin to see then you begin to see that what looked so awful on wednesday on friday or is awful is awful but it's not eternal you can get through it and when you get through it you can understand it okay we're not like in disagreement but i'm trying to um maybe get you to relate to

Is that, and I lay it on black men because I'm a black woman. You have every right to. I'm sure it's that arbitrary. No, you have every right to. But a guy, let's say a guy's going with a girl. You're going with Maybel. And Maybel gets pregnant. All of a sudden you can't speak to Maybel because you don't have the money for a crib, right? She doesn't need a crib.

The baby's going to sleep someplace. If you can follow me for two seconds. Wait, wait. The baby's going to sleep someplace. The baby's going to eat something. But what she needs at that moment is a man. And if the man functions as a man, which is not necessarily a provider for all that stuff, because everybody can understand why you can't buy something. You don't have a job. You didn't have a job when you all was going to bed. Why are you going to get a job? Because she got pregnant. You understand? There's no job.

But what she needs as a man to come by and say, hey, baby, you look good. And black men refuse to function like that because they say, I want to bring the crib when I come. You're never going to get the crib. Baby, baby. Bring yourself. Baby, I agree with you. I agree with you. I understand what you're saying. But let me tell you this. You may be absolutely right, and you are right from your point of view. It's arbitrary. But you have to understand my point of view. That's right. Yeah.

And from my point of view, well, if you were pregnant, I would act very differently. That's, you know, that's me. That's something else. But from the man's point of view, given the fact, as we said much earlier, that the standards of the civilization into which you were born are first outside of you. And by the time you get to be a man, they're inside of you. And this is not susceptible to any kind of judgment. It's a fact.

If you're treated a certain way, you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real, they're real for you, whether they're real or not. And in this civilization, a man who cannot support his wife and his child is not a man. And this is also in the, for example, in the welfare rules. You know, the black man has always been treated as a slave. And of course, he reacts that way, one way or another.

You know, and you can blame him on a human level if you like. But I think it's more interesting to not try to, you have to understand it. The bag the cat is in. But it's so... You know, because how can I, you know, I'm not being rational. You know, I may love you, especially if I love you. How in the world am I... I can't come with nothing.

I know it doesn't make any sense, Nikki, but a man is built like that. You see, when we talk about, and we talk about the children, right? We talk about like, let's say my little boy, your nephew, something like that. We talk about you. How are we going to create the new child in the same old syndrome? Somebody has to fake it enough.

You understand? Somebody has to say, hell no, I can't buy you a bicycle. You don't need one. And smile about it so the kid can say, I'm not afraid of daddy. But sometimes that happens, and I draw... But not enough to talk about... We're talking about the group. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but wait. We're talking about the group. Hold the phone, hold the phone, hold the phone, hold the phone, baby. You know, it has begun. Something has begun. The fact that we're talking about it is a beginning. It's very important. You know, it's very important indeed. I've had to learn in my own life, you know, I want this...

I wanted Friday. And Friday comes and I work my behind off to get something done that doesn't come. It doesn't come in 20 years. Then you use that 20 years. Look, life is a very short and very long time.

It is, really it is, you know. And it's very important not to get hung up on any given detail because what is there, like the fact that you're a woman and the fact that I'm a man, that's going to be there forever. And we're going to deal with that forever. And we have to deal with it from day to day, from day to day, you know. Because if we love each other, we both know it. The tragedy is we both know it. And the greater tragedy is that it's destroyed forever.

But I think it has nothing to do with you and nothing to do with me. A man is built as he's built. And there's nothing one can do about that. A man is not a woman. That's true. You know, and whether he's wrong or right. Look, if we're living in the same house, you're my wife and my woman. I had to be responsible for that house. And I'm not allowed to be responsible for that house. I'm no longer in my own eyes. It doesn't make any difference what you may think of me. In my own eyes. That's fair. I'm not a man.

That's what I mean. It does indeed make a difference what I think about it. Because I could be perfectly willing, and as a matter of fact, I am perfectly willing to concede that, first of all, a man is a natural aggressor.

You know what I mean? I don't care if I walked up to you and said, let's go to bed. You are the aggressor. And that's it. Because it all depends on you. I could fool myself. I could fool my friend. Yeah, I got it. It depended on you. You see? So I'm never confused on that level. But I've seen so many people get so hung up in such crappy, superficial kind of things that for lack of being able to bring a stake in the house, they won't come.

I can get my own damn steak. I need you. And that's what the black, no, really, I mean, that's to me what the black man, isn't it? Nikki, you're perfectly right. But you're being perfectly rational. But it's a rational situation. Yeah, but love is not a rational situation. Love must be. It must be rational.

Because this irrationality that we have does not work. It destroys people. I quite agree with you, but this is something we have to confront. When I was 22, I was about to get married. And for several reasons, I threw my wedding rings in the river, and that was when I split. You know, decided I would leave. I didn't get married partly because I had no future.

It's very, very important. You had no future. I had no future. No, you got to go back to where I was. Yeah, 22. Okay. I had no future. I couldn't keep a job. No. Because I couldn't send the people I was working for. And there wasn't a... I couldn't... Nobody could call me a nigger. Because I was small. No. Yeah, a little nigger. No. So I split, you know. Now, I love that girl. And I wanted children.

But I already had eight. And they were all starving. Yeah. And from my point of view, it would have been an act of the most criminal irresponsibility to bring another mouse into the world which I could not feed. Yeah, but you see, those weren't your children. Those were your father's children. My father was dead. And as far as they knew then...

One cannot, and I'm not knocking your life, you know what I mean? But one cannot be responsible for what one has not produced. I said we are not being rational. But I said we must. I mean, that's my quarrel with you. We must become rational. Those are my brothers and sisters. They were your brothers and sisters. But they were your father's children and your mother's children. That was my father's responsibility. As far as I was concerned, they belonged to me. Do you know what your life...

And I'm saying it like that. You know what I mean? I'm trying to... Do you know what your life looks like, though? And this is what's happening also today. It looks like a black man can't make it with a black woman.

If somebody looks at the two of us, man, we're the weirdest looking people on earth because you went your way and I went my way. But you're saying the same thing. And that's sort of a shame to say that I can't have a black man standing with me and you can't have a black woman because we wouldn't be who we are if we had. And that's a fact. But Nikki, we are nevertheless, we are here. We met. Oh, you and I met. But I'm talking about for the statement, man. You're looking like a Huey Newton.

Yeah. He can't make it with a black woman. Who could be his woman? We don't know. It's such a shame. We don't know that much about the man. We know what the image. Yeah, but... We know what we've seen. Let us forget the image. We don't know anything at all about the man. We know a little bit. Let us assume we don't. Okay, let us assume we don't. No. Insofar as it's true, if it's true,

That Huey, for example, cannot make it with a black woman. I don't know that that's true. I don't know that it's true. I'm saying that to date. That is part of the trap to make one believe that. I don't believe that myself. It's part of a societal illusion, which you're expected to believe so that you can react to it and be distracted from the main point, which is one's relationship to each other.

That conversation that you just heard between Nikki Giovanni, who passed away yesterday at the age of 81, and James Baldwin is only the first part of the conversation. I'm going to be playing you part two of this fascinating conversation tomorrow.

So please tune in for it. Now, if you'd like to get ahead of that and watch the entire two-hour conversation between Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin, then you can do so by clicking on the link in the liner notes to this particular episode and watch the whole thing yourself. I really think that it is an experience either way to listen to this conversation and

and to also watch it. I would actually do both. But of course, the way to really do that would be to listen to part two of the conversation that you'll hear on this episode, well, tomorrow's episode of this podcast. And then you should watch the whole thing in its entirety.

I think the conversation that Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin have is pure poetry. And I don't want to sound like I'm trivializing the conversation, though, although I'm sure it seems that I am. I'm simply conveying, and you've just heard for the course of the last hour of their conversation, just how I think...

deep, rich, meaningful, and educating and edifying that that conversation was. And so I do hope that you appreciated, learned, understood, enjoyed, contemplated, and really gave some deep, deep thought in that contemplation to what you just heard. Because what was shared and what was said and what was expressed

by both Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin really is where we are right now. James Baldwin was a humanist, and I'd say Nikki Giovanni was as well, although I don't know, she might disagree. She might have disagreed with that characterization.

But she, as you heard, was always, as she said, a proud militant. She absolutely was. And there's a connotation to that word as well that is negative. And I don't find the word militant to be a negative word. It's the white society that you live in and I live in.

The systemic society that we live in uses that word in a negative way when it comes to black people. Now, when it comes to Daniel Penny, who is in the military, that is not used negatively. And when it comes to the military industrial complex or the military at large that the United States has,

That's not used negatively because the assumption and the first thing that the vast majority of us think is when we hear the word military in this country is white man. And so it's not used negatively in that context. But when you put a black person

in that rubric. When you put people fighting for their human rights who are black in that rubric, somehow militant all of a sudden becomes this, ooh, negative thing. Oh my gosh, this fearful thing. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. So that word militant, you know, is not one that I would call negative at all. It's how people in society react

in this case, how white people in society, how some white people in the society shape language and shape words and use them in certain ways. Malcolm X was someone who absolutely railed against that and turned those words inside out as black people at large did and have done, right? We have reversed some of these words, although some of the ones that we've reversed, I don't necessarily think need reversing, but

and you know which ones I'm talking about. But the bottom line is that language is something that's very fluid, is what I'm saying. But the conversational language that you just heard over the last roughly one hour is something that you will be treated to in part two. The theater of your mind, as has been said by a number of people in the past who have DJed and done talk radio,

I think Gary Bird was one of them in Hope Tep, Gary Bird from years ago. And also I think Joe Madison, who passed away at the beginning of this year, in January of this year, right at the end of the month of January of this year, one of the great losses of

that we've had this year and also Nikki Giovanni now at the end of the year in this final month of 2024 has passed away. I'll be talking a bit more about Nikki Giovanni tomorrow as well as playing you part two of that incredible, that just really indescribable, really I should say, conversation that took place in London, in my hometown in 1971.

between Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin. Fascinating, brilliant stuff. You really can't put one word on it to describe it. You have to experience it. And I do hope that you experienced part one of the conversation you just heard. You can follow along on social media and find me, of course, on numerous platforms there, including Spoutable, spoutable.com forward slash Spoutable.

Popcorn R-E-E-L. Fanbase.app forward slash popcorn R-E-E-L. Please invest in Fanbase now. The social media revolution begins with Fanbase. Isaac Hayes III's social media platform is going to just absolutely get better and better and it already is.

Join the Fanbase experience today and invest in Fanbase. Startengine.com forward slash Fanbase. Get started today. Blue Sky, popcorn, R-E-E-L dot B-Sky dot social says S-E-Z dot U-S forward slash Fanbase.

Popcorn R-E-E-L. You can find me on Sez. And of course, you can find me on Threads. Threads.net forward slash popcorn R-E-E-L. I'm also on X as well at the popcorn R-E-E-L, though I don't really post on there anymore. I did one post on there yesterday.

in a response to Joan Armatrading, who also shares my birthday from yesterday, and so does Dick Van Dyke and a number of other people. And by the way, both Dick Van Dyke and Joan Armatrading are really good people, so it helps to share a birthday with people who are really good, decent people. And so I appreciate that as well. But sadly, we have lost one of the greats

giants of liberation struggle, black liberation struggle, and of black arts and black poetry, the black arts movement. We lost Nikki Giovanni yesterday at the age of 81, tremendously sad and a loss that's immeasurable, real loss, a true loss, deep loss that, um,

Yeah, that's a loss that you, it's just indescribable what she meant to that movement, to the movement. You know, I still don't remember the name of the sister, but put it this way. I do remember that she wrote books about black love and she wrote books about black women.

She wrote books about visual art and poetry. I can't believe, and I've got these books on my shelf. I don't remember her name. This is the problem. When you get older, you begin to realize that you cannot remember a darn thing. Oh, dearie me. But I tell you what, I will never forget Nikki Giovanni. And I first learned of her years and years and years ago.

and her impact. And so, you know, I do urge you to look her up online at

and really become familiar with her work. She left us so much, so much to treasure and remember. And you'll be hearing part two of that conversation, but I'll also, in addition to playing you part two of the conversation between Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin, I'll also be playing you Nikki Giovanni in her own words as well. So you get to know a bit more about Nikki Giovanni and

as well for those of you who aren't familiar or who weren't familiar with her. So I do want to thank you again for being here. Remember, follow the Politocrat Daily podcast. Also, you can also go online to the shop because, yeah, I do sell merchandise that I actually created myself.

designed, you can go to the-politocrat.myshopify.com to buy the merchandise. We'll be restocking a number of things, but there are lots of things available that you can purchase that I have designed. You can also, of course, follow this podcast, subscribe to it on Apple or Spotify or GoodPods or Amazon or Odyssey or Audible or

Pandora and numerous other podcasting platforms. Thank you very much for listening to this edition of The Politocrat. I'm Omar Moore.