James Baldwin Tea Towel

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

James Arthur Baldwin (1924-1987) was an American novelist, playwright, essayist, poet, and activist. His novels, plays and essays explore intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in the United States during the mid twentieth-century and the psychological implications of racism for both the oppressed and the oppressor.

As Juan Williams noted in the Washington Post, long before Baldwin’s death: "Black people reading Baldwin knew he wrote the truth. White people reading Baldwin sensed his truth about the lives of black people and the sins of a racist nation.”

The quotation on this tea towel comes from a 1962 essay Baldwin wrote for the New York Times, and it is still relevant today.