James Baldwin Debates William F. Buckley at Cambridge

Feb. 18, 1965 - James Baldwin, the Negro writer, won a two-minute standing ovation from nearly 1,000 Cambridge University students tonight with an emotional talk on the plight of the American Negro that wound up as an indictment of American society.

He opposed William F. Buckley, editor-in-chief of the right-wing National Review, in a debate at the Cambridge Union on the motion: “The American dream is at the expense of the American Negro.”Baldwin said it was. Speaking of his race, he told the students:“I picked the cotton. I carried it to market. I built the railways under someone else’s whip — for nothing, for nothing.

“The Southern oligarchy was created by my labor, my sweat, the violation of my women, the murder of my children — all this in the land of the free and the home of the brave.”After the wild applause for Baldwin, Buckley rose. He said Baldwin was treated throughout the United States with “unctuous servitude” and his presence in Cambridge showed American concern with the Negro problem.

“But I challenge you,” Buckley said, “to name another civilization where the problem of a minority creates as much dramatic concern as in the United States.”

Baldwin said the American sense of reality had been destroyed by racial prejudice.

The tragedy, he declared, was summed up by the young Negro boy who, thinking he is like everybody else, goes to the movies to watch Gary Cooper shooting Indians and discovers he is one of the Indians.

Buckley said the Negro’s best chance was in a “mobile society” like the United States and that overthrowing that society was not the alternative to changing the status quo. He said he wanted Negroes to take more advantage of their opportunities.

Buckley was frequently challenged with questions and points of order. During one of his attacks on Baldwin, he was hissed by the students.

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