Tuesday, June 15, 2010
JamesBaldwin in San Francisco-[-Take This Hammer
Atthe end of April last year, SF State posted James Baldwin's Take
This Hammer online (https://diva.sfsu.edu/bundles/187041).
> KQED's film unit follows poet and activist JamesBaldwin in the spring of 1963, as he's driven around San Francisco to meetwith members of the local African-American community. He is escorted byYouth For Service's Executive Director Orville Luster and intent ondiscovering: "The real situation of negroes in the city, as opposed tothe image San Francisco would like to present." He declares: "There isno moral distance ... between the facts of life in San Francisco andthe facts of life in Birmingham.Someone's got to tell it like it is. And that's where it's at."Includes frank exchanges with local people on the street, meetings withcommunity leaders and extended point-of-view sequences shot from amoving vehicle, featuring the Bayview and Western Additionneighborhoods. Baldwin reflects on the racial inequality thatAfrican-Americans are forced to confront and at one point tries to liftthe morale of a young man by expressing his conviction that: "Therewill be a negro president of this country but it will not be thecountry that we are sitting in now." The TV Archive would like to thankDarryl Cox for championing the merits of this film and for hisdetermination that it be preserved and remastered for posterity.
Anumber of people immediately asked for a copy, but there were
copyrightissues so downloads were not allowed.
Two weeks ago Alex Cherian, the filmarchivist, posted the following
note on the page:
"Pleasecontact me directly with requests to access 'Take This Hammer'
onDVD, at acherian@sfsu.edu"
https://theblacklist.net/
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