What Truth Sounds Like summary

Today, many people consider John F. Kennedy to be one of the more progressive presidents in terms of civil rights, but the truth is that the black community grew quite fed up with his lack of action. At the start of his presidency, it’s safe to say that the president was downright ambivalent about civil rights. His brother Robert was a bit more proactive.

In April 1963, a nonviolent protest in Birmingham, Alabama led by Martin Luther King, Jr. ended with men, women and children alike being blasted with fire hoses, set upon by dogs and beaten with clubs. As attorney general, Robert Kennedy had sent mediators down to help de-escalate the situation and make sure no further protesters were hurt. The effort helped earn the Kennedy administration strong rebuke from white politicians and leaders in the South.

It was short notice, but James Baldwin managed to get some big names to show up for an afternoon meeting with Robert Kennedy. Attendees included popular singer Harry Belafonte; the actress, Lena Horne; the highly respected scholar and psychologist, Kenneth Clark; and the playwright of A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry.

Hansberry had been an activist for women’s rights and black rights since before Baldwin joined the cause. For years, she’d been putting social commentary and progressive messages into her work, and her ability to mix artistic integrity with political purposefulness made her an inspirational figure for Baldwin.

On the following morning, there was a front-page headline in the New York Times about the meeting: “Robert Kennedy Consults Negroes Here About North.” The subtitle mentioned a few of the attendees, including Lena Horne and James Baldwin, but there was a lesser-known name that really stole the show: Jerome Smith, a Freedom Rider who had been viciously beaten by the police and Southern thugs.

Freedom Riders were nonviolent activists who rode on buses throughout the South to fight segregation, and now Smith was in New York receiving medical treatment for his wounds.

For nearly three hours, Robert Kennedy was forced to listen uncomfortably to an emotional barrage. It wasn’t the level-headed, clear-eyed discussion that Kennedy had hoped for, so when it was all over, he considered the meeting an unequivocal disaster.

Belafonte and Clark tried to console him afterward, but Kennedy felt hurt and upset that no one was willing to talk about laws, facts and policies. Instead, people wanted Kennedy to bear witness to what was going on in the parts of the nation he hadn’t seen first-hand – the places where Jerome Smith had been – and to recognize how the issue of racism was more a moral issue than a legal one.

Tragically, Robert Kennedy was shot dead after a campaign speech in Los Angeles, on June 5, 1968, just a couple of months after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. When it happened, the author was only nine years old, but he remembers thinking how Robert Kennedy was the first white man he believed honestly cared for black folk.

The author also believes that politicians need to return to that room in 1963 and learn, as Robert Kennedy did, about how the nation as a whole can benefit from addressing the issue of black equality.

A lot has changed in the music industry since the days of Harry Belafonte. There used to be a very concerted effort in the black community to keep a positive media image at all times. Things like racial insecurities, misogyny or materialism were kept private – that is, until hip-hop arrived and made these things very public.

Belafonte has been vocal over the years in calling out black entertainers or even politicians like former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who, in his eyes, didn’t do enough to forward the black cause. While he’s even been critical of Jay-Z and Beyoncé, the truth is there are a great many entertainers and athletes carrying the Belafonte torch.

James Baldwin set huge standards for black intellectuals. Few could hope to write as well and so strikingly reveal the truth about the moral issue of racism in America.

Nevertheless, Baldwin had his critics, including the Black Panther leader, Eldridge Cleaver, who was especially venomous in denouncing Baldwin – perhaps because of his homosexuality, which Cleaver saw as a “sickness.” But the clash between Baldwin and Cleaver also reveals a general conflict between intellectuals and radical activists that we can still see today.

Artists like Harry Belafonte and his mentor, the actor Paul Robeson, made it clear a long time ago that pop culture has the ability to both enlighten and empower.

Robeson used his platform as one of the great actors of his time to call for social change in such a defiant way that it earned him a blacklisting and cost him his career. Belafonte learned from this and was more sly in defying white norms while inspiring the black community.