If Beale Street Could Talk

“Daddy would point out different sights to us and we might stop in Battery Park and have ice cream and hot dogs. Those were great days and we were always very happy—but that was because of our father, not because of the city. It was because we knew our father loved us. Now, I can say, because I certainly know it now, the city didn’t. They looked at us as though we were zebras—and, you know, some people like zebras and some people don’t. But nobody ever asks the zebra.” 

Tish identifies her father’s love as a stabilizing influence that allowed her to have a happy childhood. The contrast between feeling like a beloved daughter and a “zebra” points to Baldwin’s representation of the city as a place hostile to African Americans and one in which to be hypervisible to whites is to be in danger for an African American. The happiness Tish experienced because of her father also shows that familial love is one of several forces capable of inoculating African American children from the forces of racism. 

“What Fonny was doing in the street was just exactly what Frank was doing in the tailor shop and in the house. He was being bad. That’s why he hold on to that tailor shop as long as he could. That’s why, when Fonny came home bleeding, Frank could tend to him; that’s why they could, both the father and the son, love me. It’s not really a mystery except it’s always a mystery about people. I used to wonder, later, if Fonny’s mother and father ever made love together.”

Fonny, unlike Tish, doesn’t have the benefit of a functional family to shelter him from racist society. Frank is Fonny’s one source of unconditional love. Tish’s notion that they were “bad” because of the dysfunction in the family once again highlights the importance of familial love as a protective force.

“The church began to rock. And rocked me and Fonny, too, though they didn’t know it, and in a very different way. Now, we knew that nobody loved us: or, now, we knew who did. Whoever loved us was not here.” 

Both Tish and Fonny reject traditional, Christian, African American spirituality, while Alice Hunt embraces it. Their rejection is rooted in part in an awareness of Alice’s hypocrisy—she is self-righteous, judgmental, and aspires to Black respectability despite her faith. This scene is also one of several in which African American music is central—a gospel song encouraging putting one’s hope in the next life dominates this scene. That focus on the next life rather than the real and present threats to people like Tish and Fonny is one of the reasons that these two young people reject the church as a source of strength.

“The other places in Harlem are even worse than the projects. You’d never be able to start your new life in those places, you remember them too well, and you’d never want to bring up your baby there. But it’s something, when you think about it, how many babies were brought into those places, with rats as big as cats, roaches the size of mice, splinters the size of a man’s finger, and somehow survived it.” 

Tish presents these parts of Harlem as places that are devastated by poverty and lack of investment in African American communities. This representation of Harlem reflects Baldwin’s commitment to realistic representation of African American urban communities during the era of the Black Arts Movement. This vision of the city contrasts with the vision of the city from those of previous generations, when the city was a symbol of hope and new beginnings for African Americans who engaged in the Great Migration from the South to the cities.

“Tish […] when we was first brought here, the white man he didn’t give us no preachers to say words over us before we had our babies. And you and Fonny be together right now, married or not, wasn’t for that same damn white man. So, let me tell you what you got to do. You got to think about that baby. You got to hold on to that baby, don’t care what else happens or don’t happen. You got to do that. Can’t nobody else do that for you. And the rest of us, well, we going to hold on to you. And we going to get Fonny out.”

Sharon’s expression of support for Fonny and Tish shows her unconditional love for her daughter and her understanding that the configurations of the African American family are still shaped by the experience of slavery despite over a century of supposed freedom. This expression of familial love and cultural wisdom is a source of strength for Tish. 

“It’s not very high, it’s done in black wood. It’s of a naked man with one hand at his forehead and the other half hiding his sex. The legs are long, very long, and very wide apart, and one foot seems planted, unable to move, and the whole motion of the figure is torment.” 

This passage is a description of one of Fonny’s sculptures. The sculpture allows Fonny to express parts of the Black experience, particularly that of African American men who are ignored by the culture at large. This sculpture is also an important symbol of Fonny’s identity as an artist.

“Fonny had found something that he could do, that he wanted to do, and this saved him from the death that was waiting to overtake the children of our age. Though the death took many forms, though people died early in many different ways, the death itself was very simple and the cause was simple, too: as simple as a plague: the kids had been told that they weren’t worth shit and everything they saw around them proved it. They struggled, they struggled, but they fell, like flies, and they congregated on the garbage heaps of their lives, like flies.

Baldwin here expresses why Black art is central to the survival of African Americans. In Fonny’s own life, his ability to create art allows him to counter the overwhelming pressure from a racist society and self-destructive choices such as addiction. In this quote, Tish is making the connection between the larger racism of society and the lack of success that many of her young peers experience. 

“At his house, there was always fighting. Mrs. Hunt couldn’t stand Fonny, or Fonny’s ways, and the two sisters sided with Mrs. Hunt—especially because, now, they were in terrible trouble. They had been raised to be married but there wasn’t anybody around them good enough for them. They were really just ordinary Harlem girls, even though they’d made it as far as City College.” 

All three Hunt women exemplify Black respectability—they are supposedly sexually chaste, go to church, and pursue higher education to advance themselves. During the Harlem Renaissance, respectable (generally light-skinned) women were the idealized representatives of African Americans who wanted greater access to civil rights. The inability of the Hunts to be happy and find love undercuts the idea that Black respectability will save African Americans, while Baldwin’s choice to make the heroes—Tish and Fonny—darker-skinned and working class—is a turn to more realistic representation of the lives of most African Americans.

“He wasn’t anybody’s nigger. And that’s a crime, in this fucking free country. You’re suppose to be somebody’s nigger. And if you’re nobody’s nigger, you’re a bad nigger: and that’s what the cops decided when Fonny moved downtown.”

This quote highlights several white supremacist notions that pervade the criminal justice system, including the racist notion that African Americans are inherently criminals, that their movements must be controlled by (white) others, and that law enforcement’s role is to limit African American mobility. Tish thus identifies the subordination of African Americans as one of the primary purposes of the carceral state.

“That baby was our baby, it was on its way, my father’s great hand on my belly held it and warmed it: in spite of all that hung above our heads, that child was promised safety. Love had sent it, spinning out of us, to us. Where that might take us, no one knew: but, now, my father, Joe, was ready. In a deadlier and more profound way than his daughters were, this child was the seed of his loins. And no knife could cut him off from life until that child was born.”

The scene in which Tish shares the news of her pregnancy with her family of origin depicts the love within the family as a pillar of strength. 

“Fonny’s family didn’t give a shit about him and were not going to do a thing to help him. We were his family now, the only family he had: and now everything was up to us.” 

Baldwin sets up the contrast between the Hunt and Rivers families by highlighting how the lack of love between the Hunts makes them incapable of meeting challenges, while Fonny’s association with the Rivers and their love for each other makes them a resource that supports his ability to survive.

“I live with wood and stone. I got stone in the basement and I’m working up here all the time and I’m looking for a loft where I can really work. So, all I’m trying to tell you, Tish, is I ain’t offering you much. I ain’t got no money and I work at odd jobs—just for bread, because I ain’t about to go for none of their jive-ass okey-doke—and that means that you going to have to work, too, and when you come home most likely I’ll just grunt and keep on with my chisels and shit and maybe sometimes you’ll think I don’t even know you’re there. But don’t ever think that, ever. You’re with me all the time […] and when I put down the chisel, I’ll always come to you. I’ll always come to you. I need you. I love you.” 

Fonny’s declaration of love is one in which he articulates his identity: He is an artist, he loves and is loyal to Tish, and he rejects the more materialistic aspects of the American Dream. His choices reflect Baldwin’s aesthetic as a writer associated with the Black Arts Movement, especially the notion that Black art is an essential part of African American culture, including that of working-class people. These notions of who can be an artist and the function of art are in contrast to those of the Harlem Renaissance.

“Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind. And I could not be indifferent to Daniel because I realized, from Fonny’s face, how marvelous it was for him to have scooped up, miraculously, from the swamp waters of his past, a friend.” 

Tish’s love for Fonny expands to include other people and her community. Her ability to see Daniel’s well-being as something about which she should be concerned underscores Baldwin’s emphasis on Black love as a powerful force to counter racism.

“Man, it was bad. Very bad. And it’s bad now. Maybe I’d feel different if I had done something and got caught. But I didn’t do nothing. They were just playing with me, man, because they could. And I’m lucky it was only two years, you dig? Because they can do with you whatever they want. Whatever they want. And they dogs, man. I really found out, in the slammer, what Malcolm and them cats was talking about. The white man’s got to be the devil. He sure ain’t a man. Some of the things I saw, baby, I’ll be dreaming about until the day I die.” 

Daniel is profoundly damaged by his experiences while incarcerated. His description of the impact of incarceration on his well-being as well as his recognition that he was assumed guilty because of racism underscores Baldwin’s portrait of the criminal justice system as part of a carceral state shaped by white supremacy.

“Daniel, who cannot abandon his mother, yet longs to be free to confront his life; is terrified at the same time of what that life may bring, is terrified of freedom; and is struggling in a trap. And Fonny, who is younger, struggles now to be older, in order to help his friend toward his deliverance. Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel? And why not every man? The song is old, the question unanswered.”

Black music is a motif that highlights enduring aspects of the African American experience that enhance their survival. In this case, the song emphasizes the desire of African American men to be free of the weight of racism but the simultaneous awareness of the way that society, especially the criminal justice system, conspires to limit freedom.

“And I understand that the growth of the baby is connected with his determination to be free. So. I don’t care if I get to be as big as two houses. The baby wants out. Fonny wants out. And we are going to make it: in time.” 

The baby is an important symbol for the future and Fonny and Tish’s love, specifically their desire to use their love as the basis of a better life for themselves.

“He walked the way John Wayne walks, striding out to clean up the universe, and he believed all that shit: a wicked, stupid, infantile motherfucker. Like his heroes, he was kind of pinheaded, heavy gutted, big assed, and his eyes were as blank as George Washington’s eyes. But I was beginning to learn something about the blankness of those eyes. What I was learning was beginning to frighten me to death. If you look steadily into that unblinking blue, into that pinpoint at the center of the eye, you discover a bottomless cruelty, a viciousness cold and icy.” 

This description of Bell is laced with contempt. Baldwin puts these words in Tish’s mouth to show her awareness of law enforcement as an agent of the white supremacy that is deeply ingrained in American society; the reference to the identity between the blankness in Bell’s eyes and the blankness in George Washington’s eyes imply that this white supremacy is as old as the country.

“I was frightened because, in the streets of the Village, I realized that we were entirely alone. Nobody cared about us except us; or, whoever loved us was not there.” 

Outside of Harlem, where there are fewer African Americans and a greater law enforcement presence, Tish feels hypervisible and exposed. Her sense that she and Fonny are out of place reflects the way that African Americans’ freedom of movement is limited by sometimes invisible racial boundaries. 

“On the night that Fonny was arrested, Daniel was at the house. He was a little drunk. He was crying. He was talking, again, about his time in prison. He had seen nine men rape one boy: and he had been raped. He would never, never, never again be the Daniel he had been.” 

Daniel’s rape is a trauma from which he cannot recover; the enduring damage he experienced in prison is an indictment of the carceral state. In addition, Tish’s linkage between Fonny’s arrest and Daniel’s rape shows her awareness of incarceration as a violation of Black bodily integrity. 

“Here, he is at everyone’s mercy, and he is also at the mercy of this stone and steel. Outside, he is not young. Here, he realizes that he is young, very young, too young. And—will he grow old here?”

In this passage, Fonny is at last beginning to accept how vulnerable he is to violence while incarcerated. His awareness that there may be no end to his incarceration shows the psychological toll of incarceration.

“Never. I don’t speak no Spanish and they don’t speak no English. But we on the same garbage dump. For the same reason.” 

Sharon connects the invisibility of poor people of color in Puerto Rico and poor people of color in New York. This connection widens the scope of Baldwin’s critique of America by connecting racism to colonialism in Puerto Rico.

“‘Get him out. That’s what we have to do. We both know he ain’t got no business in there. Them lying motherfuckers, they know it, too.’ He stands. He is trembling. The kitchen is silent. ‘Look. I know what you’re saying. You’re saying they got us by the balls. Okay. But that’s our flesh and blood, baby: our flesh and blood. I don’t know how we going to do it. I just know we have to do it.’” 

Joseph’s deep commitment to getting Fonny out shows the importance of the Rivers’ love as a source of strength. In this moment, Fonny’s situation is almost hopeless because it appears that Victoria’s disappearance and breakdown will result in Fonny’s indefinite detention. While Frank, who lacks family support, nearly gives way, Joseph’s absolute love for his family allows him to move forward.

“What have they done? Not much. To do much is to have the power to place these people where they are, and keep them where they are. These captive men are the hidden price for a hidden lie: the righteous must be able to locate the damned. To do much is to have the power and the necessity to dictate to the damned.”

This quote dissolves the differences between the incarcerated and those responsible for the carceral state. The gist of the quote is that the incarcerated are there to reassure those responsible for their incarceration of their power, and this power is founded in large part on white supremacy and the lack of value for the lives of poor people. This idea undercuts the notion that there is something inherently criminal about poor people and people of color who are fellow prisoners with Fonny.