Watch an exclu­sive clip from I Am Not Your Negro

In Jan­u­ary 1963, George Wal­lace gave his inau­gur­al address as Gov­er­nor of Alaba­ma, dur­ing which he uttered the infa­mous phrase: ​“seg­re­ga­tion now, seg­re­ga­tion tomor­row, seg­re­ga­tion forever”.

That August, around 250,000 peo­ple marched on Wash­ing­ton in sup­port of African-Amer­i­can civ­il rights, and heard Mar­tin Luther King, Jr give his his­toric ​“I Have a Dream” speech in front of the Lin­coln Memorial.

In the spring between these two impact­ful events, Boston-based broad­cast­er WGBH tele­vised a pro­gramme enti­tled The Negro and the Amer­i­can Promise, fea­tur­ing inter­views with King, Mal­colm X and author James Baldwin.

Baldwin’s sec­tion was filmed straight after his tense meet­ing with Attor­ney Gen­er­al Robert F Kennedy, which was organ­ised in hope of strength­en­ing race rela­tions but end­ed with­out consensus.

In one clip from the WGBH pro­gramme, Bald­win declares: ​“The future of the negro in this coun­try is pre­cise­ly as bright, or as dark, as the future of the coun­try.” The New York Times went on to describe his inter­view as ​“a tele­vi­sion expe­ri­ence that seared the conscience”.

Raoul Peck’s lat­est doc­u­men­tary, I Am Not Your Negro, takes Bald­win as its sub­ject, plac­ing footage of the writer in its his­tor­i­cal con­text while draw­ing par­al­lels to con­tem­po­rary con­cerns around racism in the Unit­ed States.

Nar­rat­ed by Samuel L Jack­son, the film is adapt­ed from Baldwin’s unfin­ished man­u­script ​‘Remem­ber This House’ in which he recounts his mem­o­ries of King, Mal­colm X and Medgar Evers.

I Am Not Your Negro is released in cin­e­mas April 7. Read the LWLies Rec­om­mends review.

LWLies 107: The Sin­ners issue – Out now!