No Name in the Street

An essay in two parts. Part One is primarily a series of personal anecdotes upon which are imposed summary political analyses. The Algerian War and the Parisians' reaction to it, Camus's equivocation on the question of liberty for Algerians, Franco, and McCarthyism are all some of the subjects that Baldwin strings together in this rhetorical web of damnation of European and American politics. The moral rectitude that informs the exposition is unquestioned, yet for the most part the ideological discourse is either too abstract and facile or too obvious to impress. After a rhetorical flurry in which Western humanism is dammed as a lie, Part Two gives an account of Baldwin's experiences with and feelings about the prime movers of the civil-rights and black-power movements of the past decade. Interspersed with this is the story of a personal friend and former bodyguard who was accused of murder. Baldwin comments on his relationships with King, Malcolm X, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver, as well as the 1963 march on Washington, his abortive attempt to complete the screenplay for Malcolm's autobiography, Hollywood's coterie of civil-rights patrons and the "flower children."