Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son

This chapter responds to William Faulkner’s 1956 “A Letter to a Northern Editor,” in which the author advises the NAACP to slow down the organization's desegregation efforts. Baldwin argues that the longevity of slavery was long enough. Baldwin proposes that Faulkner goes beyond the regular immorality of Southern sentiment. For Baldwin, Faulkner attaches a sense of mysticism to the history of the South, rendering it impossible to criticize or see in totality. Baldwin demands to know what Black people should do while white Southerners take time adjusting to the removal of their privilege.

Baldwin examines the difference between Faulkner’s words—which appear to support the cause of equality—and the reality of his doctrine. Although Faulkner suggests that white people need to understand that racial diversity is a fact of life, he also suggests that he will fight for Mississippi before accepting control from the federal government. Faulkner’s philosophies are full of contradictions: “He is part of a country which boasts that it has never lost a war; but he is also the representative of a conquered nation” (123). Faulkner adheres to a nostalgic and idealistic view of the South in which his great-grandfather owned enslaved persons and enjoyed a happy and mutual relationship with them.