James Baldwin's "Beale Street" Novel Slated For The Big Screen

At the 56th New York Film Festival (September 28-October 14), to be held at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, there will be a screening of If Beale Street Could Talk, director Barry Jenkins's film adaptation of James Baldwin's novel of the same name. (Jenkins's last film was Moonlight, which won the Best Picture Oscar in 2017.)

The film, reported amNew York (August 8, 2018), is about "a young African-American man in 1970s Harlem who is arrested and convicted for a crime he didn't commit." (Could this be another Oscar contender in the fall?)

I've never read the book and may have a copy of it. If I do, it's probably buried among the hundreds of books I own. I may just buy a copy and read it before the film is released nationwide. It's slated for release on November 30.

Dumb Donald And King James

There is an old saying, people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Well, Donald Trump, our 45th president, decided to throw stones at basketball star LeBron James (called King James by his fans) via Twitter.

James, a staunch critic of Trump and his policies, said, in an interview with CNN's Don Lemon, "We are in a position in America where this race thing has taken over. ...I believe our president is trying to divide us."

The Tweeter-in-Chief responded by saying that "Lebron [sic] James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made Lebron look smart, which isn't easy to do."

Trump has received much criticism in the media for again attacking the intelligence of African-Americans.

However, according to journalist Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, there have been several  people inside the Trump Administration who've questioned Trump's intelligence.

"There was now a fair amount of back-of-the-classroom giggling about who had called Trump what," reported Wolff. "For [Treasury secretary] Steve Mnuchin and [former Chief of Staff] Reince Priebus, he was an 'idiot.' For [Chief Economics Advisor] Gary Cohn, he was 'dumb as shit.' For [National Security Advisor] H. R. McMaster, he was a 'dope.' The list went on." (See page 304.)

Those attitudes among people in the Trump White House should make LeBron James smile and say to himself, "Look who's calling me and others dumb."

James Weldon Johnson On The Future Of Harlem

"Will Harlem become merely a famous ghetto, or will it be a center of intellectual, cultural and economic forces exerting an influence throughout the world, especially upon Negro peoples?"--James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938;Harlem Renaissance writer), "The Making of Harlem," Survey Graphic, March 1925, quoted in One Righteous Man: Samuel Battle and the Shattering of the Color Line in New York by Arthur Browne (Beacon Press, 2015), page 193.

"Have you ever stopped to think what the future of Harlem will be? It will be a city within a city. It will be the greatest Negro city in the world within the greatest city in the world."--James Weldon Johnson, "The Future Harlem," New York Age, January 10, 1920, ibid., page 153.

None of the above will happen if the gentrifiers and real estate developers of the 21st century have their way.

History And Ideas

"History is shaped by its battle of ideas, and I wanted to be in the arena, not because I want to fight, but because some things need to be said. And some things need to be defended."--Charles Krauthammer (1950-2018), conservative public intellectual/syndicated columnist, quoted in "Charles Krauthammer, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Columnist and Intellectual Provacateur, Dies at 68" by Adam Bernstein, The Washington Post, June 21, 2018, republished in the Los Angeles Times.

Harlem Week Celebrates 44 Women Achievers

This year marks the 44th anniversary of Harlem Week, which is now actually a month-long event (July 29-August 31). Its goal is to celebrate "the gravitas, history and brilliance of all that is Harlem," to quote the Calendar of Events brochure.

Harlem Week 2018's theme this year is "Women Transforming Our World: Past, Present and Future." And since Harlem Week is 44 years old, 44 women of achievement will be honored at various sites in and around Harlem. Among the honorees are opera singer Marian Anderson; actress Ruby Dee; choreographer, dancer Judith Jamison; U.S. Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor; New York Amsterdam News publisher Elinor Tatum; activist Rosa Parks; tennis champs Venus Williams and Serena Williams; future activist Yolanda Renee King, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 9-year-old granddaughter; and television journalist and talk-show host Rachel Maddow.

Included in the Calendar of Events is acknowledgment of Harlem's LGBTQ members, "our community within the community." "The LGBTQ community has played a significant role," stated the brochure, "in developing Harlem's music, art, theater and literature scenes, and has been responsible for producing some of the greatest artists, thinkers, philosophers and poets over the past century."

With that in mind, I hope that next year's Harlem Week will do a month-long tribute to the LGBTQ community. The headline the brochure used for the acknowledgment of the LGBTQ community--"Harlem's LGBTQ Roots Run Deep"--would be an appropriate slogan for such a tribute.

How Hot Is It In Hell?

During past heat waves, I remember hearing religious zealots say when people complained about the heat, "Hell is hotter than this." I don't know how they knew that unless they'd been to Hell and back, an unlikely occurrence.

Plus, I've heard that there are microorganisms on Earth that can survive in extreme temperatures. If such a place as Hell exists, would these microorganisms survive and thrive in such a hostile, uncomfortable environment?

Stepin Fetchit, In Real Life, Was Not Dimwitted

The following is an unpublished letter-to-the editor.

Voice of the People
New York Daily News
450 West 33rd Street
New York, NY 10001

October 20, 2005

To the Editor:

Re: Stepin Fetchit retrospective at MoMa [Museum of Modern Art] ("Now Entertainment," 10/18/05). As an African-American, I am not proud of the racist stereotypes he perpetuated on the screen. However, I don't think he should be singled out for special vilification. In the 1930s and '40s, black performers were extremely limited in the types of roles they were offered. Clearly Fetchit [1902-1985] was aware of this situation himself when he made the following statement: "A Negro couldn't do anything straight, only comedy." (The quote is from Donald Bogle's book on Black Hollywood, Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams.)

Plus, Fetchit went broke financing a production company in an unsuccessful attempt to make a movie about [boxer] Jack Johnson and [baseball player] Satchel Paige, two African-American sports heroes who were the antithesis of Fetchit's screen persona. That should be proof enough that Fetchit (born Lincoln Perry), a third-year college dropout, was not the dimwitted, shiftless character he portrayed on screen.

Sincerely yours,
Charles Michael Smith