Just back from seeing “I Am Not Your Negro” at the Gene Siskel Film Center (highly recommended), I’m pondering, not for the first time, how history is created and shaped. In the true sense, history is, of course, what has happened. But those who tell the narrative get to define the narrative, so history as we know it can be quite different from the actual events that happened.

This is nothing new, of course. Those who die in battle don’t own the narrative of war. Those who hold power have the luxury of being able to tell their version of events and have that telling accepted as authoritative. There’s nothing inherently sinister in this, just, perhaps…distorting.

What has me pondering this is a segment in “I Am Not Your Negro” where Baldwin (whose writings are narrated by Samuel L. Jackson) declares that so much has been said about author/playwright Lorraine Hansberry’s meeting with Robert F. Kennedy that Baldwin feels compelled to address what really happened. Long story short, in a meeting to discuss civil rights and race relations, Hansberry was so disappointed and disheartened by Kennedy’s response that at one point she verbally dressed him down, then walked out of the room. Continue reading →