It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story.
Source: Many Thousands Gone, in Partisan Review (New Brunswick, N.J., Nov. -Dec. 1951; repr. in Notes of a Native Son, pt. 1, 1955).
-- James Baldwin, (Aug 2 1924-1987), US novelist, essayist; He was a noted spokesman for American blacks in 1950s-60s.