The Last Interview by Quincy Troupe, Typescript with holograph emendations, 1987-88

Meshell Ndegeocello: In the last interview he gave, Baldwin explained the estrangement he felt from America—and from himself while living there—that led him to relocate to France, where he remained until his death. He had grown increasingly frustrated with American racism and the lack of progress despite the repeated calls for change in his writing and activism.

Rich Blint is a scholar, writer, and curator who has written extensively on James Baldwin.

Rich Blint: Two weeks before he died, in a conversation with Quincy Troupe, he said, “I was a broken motor.” And that he was right, is what he said. But that Americans are pretending that they’re changing their postures and not doing anything at all. Right? So the gap, the yawning chasm between people’s public stances and their private lives is what Mr. Baldwin was always trying to shrink—that gap, that chasm. 

Ndegeocello: Baldwin went on to express intense dissatisfaction with American life, calling it “so very false, so shallow, so plastic, so morally and ethically corrupt” that he saw nothing in it for him to aspire to. As someone so dedicated to seeking and speaking truth, he felt he could not stay in a country that refused to acknowledge the truth of bigotry and oppression or take real action to combat them.

Blint: And, I think he only gave up hope, in effect, a kind of descriptive giving up of hope, by saying that no one really listened to him, that you really can’t, in his words, go to Texas again. And what he means by that, one, he’s been going to Texas all the days of our lives, and people still insist on the doctrine of white supremacy. So we get, in November 14 and 15 of 1987, two weeks before he dies in St. Paul de Vence in the south of France, where he’d gone to live, a Baldwin that comes the closest that I know to having given up hope.

Ndegeocello: Despite his lack of hope, he still saw the importance of standing up for what he believed in. In the margin of the manuscript of that final interview, Quincy Troupe noted that one of the last things Baldwin said was that writers “must be witnesses of our time, that we must speak out against institutional and individual tyranny that if left unchecked threatens to engulf and subjugate us all.” James Baldwin’s legacy is one of hope and love. His work continues to inspire people of all ages to think deeply, pursue truth, and to work towards a better future.