James Baldwin and Margaret Mead in Conversation – Revisited

The annual Margaret Mead Film Festival, a documentary film festival founded in honor of the anthropologist, takes place October 22-25 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Its mission is to increase the understanding of the peoples and cultures across our planet.

This week, a post from Maria Popova’s insightful blog Brain Pickings brought to our attention the famous 7.5-hour conversation between Margaret Mead and writer, intellectual and American Master James Baldwin, which was recorded in 1970. According to Popova, her series on the conversation is one of her favorite pieces in the blog’s nine-year history.

In our pre-election year and in light of the Ferguson and Eric Garner tragedies, Popova highlights the conversation’s themes that resonate in our society 45 years later and are topics in the presidential debates: the difference between guilt and responsibility; race and the immigrant experience and new visions for democracy. The recording was preserved in writing in the book A Rap on Race (1971; Lippincott). In her blog, Popova pulls out the arguments and agreements between Mead and Baldwin that particularly intrigued her. A contemporary New York Times review of the book, by Richard Elman, did not praise the conversation but was scathing in its assessment.

James Baldwin is the subject of James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket, which premiered on American Masters in August 1989. His involvement in the Civil Rights Movement is a main theme of the film.