Council Member Hudson on James Baldwin Day resolution
Council Member Hudson speaks on Resolution 218, honoring James Baldwin as a groundbreaking essayist, novelist, playwright, and civil rights activist who fought racial and sexual discrimination. She highlights his legacy of fearless truth-telling as a Black gay man.
We will now move into discussion of resolutions, beginning with Council Member Hudson, followed by Dinowitz.
Thank you so much.
Today we're honoring a New Yorker whose words changed the way this country understood itself and challenged us to become something better.
James Baldwin was born in Harlem 102 years ago.
Throughout his life, he never stopped asking this country to live up to its promises of freedom.
He wrote with extraordinary honesty about race, sexuality, love, faith, and what it means to find your place in a country that so often tells you you do not belong.
Baldwin's legacy is extraordinary not only because of what he wrote, but because of how fearlessly he lived and spoke his truth.
As a black gay man in a country that routinely denied both his racial and sexual identity, Baldwin refused to make himself smaller to fit within the limits society placed on him.
He understood that telling the truth, especially when that truth makes people uncomfortable, can itself be an act of resistance.
He once wrote, not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
That idea is at the heart of Baldwin's work.
His belief in our capacity to change is part of what makes Baldwin's legacy so revolutionary.
Nearly four decades after his death, his words still resonate.
They still challenge us to confront injustice and question the systems around us.
Thank you.