Here & Now's Robin Young speaks with writer and teacher Clint Smith about drawing inspiration from Baldwin's speech to educators delivered in 1963.

I think I fell victim to the fear of wanting to create an apolitical space in the classroom and revisiting 'A Talk to Teachers' served as a really important reminder that the very decision to not discuss certain things in your classroom, is in and of itself, a political decision.

This was a moment — John F. Kennedy had just been killed. Medgar Evers, who was a prominent NAACP organizer in Mississippi, had just been assassinated. The Birmingham bombing of the four little girls in the church at 16th Street Baptist Church had just taken place, and so this was an incredibly contentious time in the United States with regard to issues of race and inequality and social stratification.

And in many ways, you know, revisiting this essay, feels as if it could have been written the other day. That's the power of Baldwin and why he's experienced such a sort of renaissance because his work is in many ways prophetic, and his work is speaking to his lifetime. But many of the issues that he was wrestling with are things that we're struggling with today.

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