To accept one’s past – one’s history – is not the same thing as drowni…

James A. Baldwin
288 citations
To accept one’s past – one’s history – is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought. ✨ Letter from a Region in My Mind by James A. Baldwin, www.newyorker.com. November 17, 1962.
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People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction. ✨ Stranger in the Village. Essay by James A. Baldwin, first published in Harper's Magazine (1953), republished in James … ▶
The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in. ✨ James Baldwin: My Uncle and His Love Life by T. Better Baldwin, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 30, 2014.
You know, it's not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.
To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger. ✨ A Letter to My Nephew by James Baldwin, progressive.org. January 1, 1962.
The white man discovered the Cross by way of the Bible, but the black man discovered the Bible by way of the Cross.

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