“The Level of a Confrontation”: Speech at San Francisco Masonic Temple

During an overloaded and intense western tour for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Baldwin spoke to an audience of over three thousand in the packed auditorium of the Masonic Temple on Mason Street in the Nob Hill section of San Francisco on May 7, 1963. The overwhelming size of the crowd at the Masonic Temple had delayed the start of Baldwin’s speech by an hour. Speaking that evening for a little over forty minutes, Baldwin delivered on his promise to script a confrontation between the worldview of his audiences and the fiercely present need for the country to change itself. To Baldwin this meant that his audiences must change themselves and, maybe even more profoundly, each other. The transcription below has been prepared by Ed Pavlić and Justin A. Joyce. Vocal emphasis has been captured with italics. Significant pauses, interruptions, and non-word interjections have been captured in editorial brackets. The recording of the speech can be found here: https://www.pacificaradioarchives.org/recording/bb0838 .