James Baldwin:
After all you’re accusing a captive population who’ve been robbed of everything of looting. It’s obscene.

Esquire magazine:
How can we get the black people to cool it?

James Baldwin:
It is not for us to cool it.

Esquire magazine:
But aren’t you the ones who are getting hurt the most?

James Baldwin:
No, we are only the ones who are dying fastest.

—James Baldwin, playwright, novelist, essayist, poet, and activist. July, 1968.