The Baldwin–Kennedy meeting of May 24, 1963 was an attempt to improve race relations in the United States. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy invited novelist James Baldwin, along with a large group of cultural leaders, to meet Kennedy in an apartment in New York City. The meeting became antagonistic and the group reached no consensus. The black delegation generally felt that Kennedy did not understand the full extent of racism in the United States. Ultimately the meeting demonstrated the urgency of the racial situation and was a positive turning point in Kennedy's attitude towards the Civil Rights Movement.
Background
After formally abolishing slavery, the United States maintained a racist society through Jim Crow laws and other forms of systemic inequality. This racism became increasingly apparent due to many well-publicized instances of police violence against nonviolent direct actions.
As the Birmingham campaign and Birmingham riot of 1963 brought negative attention to urban racism in the United States, Robert Kennedy wanted to prevent similar unrest from taking place in northern cities. Baldwin was reportedly already in contact with Kennedy on the topic of Birmingham, calling for an investigation into the role of the FBI and other federal agencies.
Baldwin, already a popular novelist, had recently gained additional fame by virtue of The Fire Next Time, a book of two essays urging action against racism in America. Baldwin had become an iconic Black American, and Kennedy sought him out for advice on how to improve race relations. Kennedy had met Baldwin in 1962 at a Nobel Prize dinner and briefly in May 1963 at Hickory Hill. They agreed to meet again, with a group of cultural leaders assembled by Baldwin.
Meeting
According to Clarence Benjamin Jones, an advisor to Martin Luther King Jr. and participant in the eventual meeting, in May 1963, Attorney General Robert Kennedy asked novelist James Baldwin to organize a "quiet, off-the-record, unpublicized get-together of prominent Negroes" to discuss the state of race relations. The meeting took place at an apartment owned by the Kennedy family at 24 Central Park South in New York City.
To meet with Kennedy and his aide Burke Marshall, Baldwin brought:
David Baldwin, James Baldwin's brother
Harry Belafonte, singer and activist
Edwin C. Berry, director of the Chicago Urban League
Kenneth Clark, psychologist, activist, and founder of Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited June Shagaloff, Education Director of the NAACP (attending in an "unofficial capacity") Lorraine Hansberry, playwright best known for A Raisin in the Sun (1959) Lena Horne, musician, actor and activist Clarence Benjamin Jones, advisor to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights lawyer Jerome Smith, Freedom Rider associated with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Rip Torn, a young white actor
Jerome Smith was a young black civil rights worker who had been beaten and jailed in Mississippi. Edwin Berry brought him along, and his story was not known by Robert Kennedy or most of those in attendance. As the meeting got underway and Kennedy began to recount how the Justice Department had been supporting the civil rights movement, Smith suddenly began to weep "as if he'd just suffered some traumatic flashback" and said: "I've seen you guys [referring to the Justice Department] stand around and do nothing more than take notes while we're being beaten." The mood quickly became tense. Smith, Baldwin later said,
set the tone of the meeting because he stammers when he's upset and he stammered when he talked to Bobby and said that he was nauseated by the necessity of being in that room. I knew what he meant. It was not personal at all. ... Bobby took it personally. Bobby took it personally and turned away from him. That was a mistake because he turned toward us. We were the reasonable, responsible, mature representatives of the Black community. Lorraine Hansberry said, "You've got a great many very, very accomplished people in this room, Mr. Attorney General. But the only man who should be listened to is that man over there."
Kennedy and Smith began to argue. Kennedy was particularly shocked when Smith said he would "never never never" join the military to fight against Cuba for the United States. The assembled group felt, generally, that Kennedy did not understand the depth of the problem at hand.