“I think I’ve been heard, and I think I’ve frightened people,” James Baldwin told The DePaulia in 1986,  his words both an indictment and a warning. 

Nearly 40 years later, his fears — of racism’s endurance, of America’s failure to confront its history — still loom over the national discourse.

In an era where affirmative action is being dismantled and Black history is increasingly vilified, Baldwin’s words feel eerily prophetic. His voice still challenges the country today. 

Baldwin’s legacy has carried on at DePaul through the play “Debate: Baldwin v. Buckley” held at Cortelyou Commons, in conjunction with Timeline Theatre and The Theatre School. 

At the height of the civil rights movement, in the halls of Cambridge University, Baldwin stood across from William F. Buckley Jr., the towering voice of American conservatism. The debate: whether the American Dream was built at the expense of Black Americans. 

The staging at Cortelyou Commons — originally built in 1929 in a style reminiscent of the halls of Cambridge  — brought the audience back to that winter in 1965.  The show ends with 30 minutes for conversation between the audience and moderators, many of which draw connections between the show’s premise and conversations around race and conservatism in modern-day America. 

In some ways, the civility that “Debate” shows has been lost in political discourse. 

“We still see some of the bullying and condescension, but in some ways, it feels more naked and exposed today,” Billy Johnson Gonzalez, an associate professor at DePaul, said. 

“I’m not sure it’s a rhetorical strategy anymore to just flat-out tell lies or vilify certain groups,” Johnson Gonzalez said. “In some ways, it’s sad to see a degradation in the respect for debate, and in other ways, it’s an absolute continuation (of Buckley’s strategies).”

In the 1986 DePaulia interview, Baldwin spoke about the ways the civil rights movement was ineffective, “No one has really groped with the civil rights situation,” Baldwin said. “Americans don’t know what to do. And I don’t think Americans will really be able to deal with anything until they deal with ‘us.’”

The arguments Baldwin dismantled in 1965 — the denial of systemic racism, the insistence that Black Americans had no claim to injustice — are not relics of the past. They have found new life in the rhetoric of the modern conservative movement, echoed in policies and court rulings that seek to undo or weaponize civil rights gains. 

The second Trump administration, much like Buckley’s defense of the American Dream, is predicated on nostalgia for an era before the victories of the civil rights movement.

According to Johnson Gonzalez, who has been teaching about Baldwin since the early 2000s, the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement is when he believes Baldwin entered the larger cultural zeitgeist of this generation. 

“Eric, Teagle (the actors playing Buckley and Baldwin) and I began working on this material in the summer of 2020, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and during the heated 2020 election cycle,” said Christopher McElroen, director of “Debate,” in a press release. 

“After the George Floyd murder, people were really looking for someone that gave them the language to talk about some of these problems in American culture,” Johnson Gonzalez said. “Baldwin gave people that language. He had that vision, and the beautiful way in which he spoke and wrote was really compelling.”

In conjunction with “Debate: Baldwin v. Buckley,” The Theatre School collaborated with various academic units and Timeline Theatre to hold “James Baldwin at 100: A Symposium” at the Watts Theatre lobby in The Theatre School on DePaul’s Lincoln Park campus. 

Amor Kohli, DePaul professor and chair of the Department of African and Black Diaspora studies, reflected on the importance of this kind of reflection in this cultural moment during his speech at the symposium. 

“I don’t need to tell you all that we are in trying times,” Kohli said. “We’re at a moment where the people who teach, study and write about things like Black artistic, political and intellectual traditions are under political and potentially physical attack.” 

Despite the political moment, Kohli said we have to keep “recognizing the joy in life.” 

A part of Baldwin’s work, Johnson Gonzalez, also pointed to the inspiration in Baldwin’s work, which was to “resist some of the negative things that are happening right now and find inspiration to work with one another.” 

Baldwin died in France in 1987, less than a year after his DePaul visit. But his critiques of America — its racial contradictions and moral failings — continue to shape conversations on this campus today.

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