I haven't read Baldwin, so maybe this comment sells him short, but virtually every time I venture to read pieces american literature written by black people, be

I haven't read Baldwin, so maybe this comment sells him short, but virtually every time I venture to read pieces american literature written by black people, be it Malcolm X's autobiography, or Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, or Martin Luther King's writings such as "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", or any book about the Black Panthers, I come away with the impression that media as a whole somehow really undersells and sanitizes the depth of the struggle and the imagination of their leaders in a way similar to Thanksgiving Dinners. Every single one of those people was saying things back in their day that are still relevant today, in a way that feels indicting of the progress made thus far.