Good morning and welcome to today's New York City Council Committee on Civil Human Rights.

Uh Chair, we are ready to begin.

All right, good morning, everyone.

My name is Sandy Nurse, and I serve as chair to the Committee on Civil and Human Rights.

I'd like to thank my colleagues for joining me today for today's vote on resolution number 218, sponsored by Councilmember Crystal Hudson.

This resolution would designate August 2nd as James Baldwin Day in New York City.

This annual day would honor his legacy as a groundbreaking essayist, novelist, playwright, poet, and civil rights activist who fought racial and sexual discrimination with candor, sensitivity, and lasting influence.

James author Baldwin was born in New York City in Harlem on August 2nd, 1924.

As a child, Baldwin sought out books to read at the public library and began writing poems, short stories, and plays at an early age.

By his early 20s, Baldwin was Baldwin was publishing books, book reviews, and essays, including his famous Notes of a Native Son, Nobody Knows My Name, and The Fire Next Time.

His works were written as the civil rights movement was taking shape and covered a wide range of subjects, including literature, film, personal identity, sexuality, and race relations.

His words were so powerful and influenced so many that he was asked to speak and teach at college campuses and civil rights gatherings across the nation and the world.

At the end of his life, he was asked that his papers, he asked that his papers and works be returned to the public library on 135th Street, now known as the County Cullen Library, where he spent so much of his childhood reading.

I am actually going to kick this over to Councilmember Hudson because I suspect her remarks are going to lift up a lot of his work.

Okay.

Thank you, uh, Chair Nurse.

I appreciate it.

Uh today we're honoring a New Yorker whose words changed the way his this country understood itself and challenged us to become something better.

James Baldwin was born in Harlem 102 years ago, and throughout his life, he never stopped asking this country to live up to its promises of freedom.

He wrote with extraordinary honesty about race, sexuality, love, faith, and what it means to find your place in a country that so often tells you that you do not belong.

Baldwin's legacy is extraordinary, not only because of what he wrote, but because of how fearlessly he lived and spoke his truth.

As a black gay man in a country that routinely denied both his racial and sexual identity, Baldwin refused to make himself smaller to fit within the limits society placed him, placed on him.

He understood that telling the truth, especially when that truth makes people uncomfortable, can itself be an act of resistance.

He once wrote, not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

That idea is at the heart of Baldwin's work.

His belief in our capacity to change is part of what makes Baldwin's legacy so revolutionary.

Nearly four decades after his death, his words still resonate.

They still challenge us to confront injustice and question the systems around us.

Establishing August 2nd annually as James Baldwin Day gives New York City the opportunity to honor one of its most powerful voices and to ensure that his life, his work, and his resistance continue to inspire generations to come.

Thank you so much to this committee for hearing it.

Thank you to Chair Nurse.

I'll let you continue with his amazing biography, and I appreciate the time.

Just a few more notes.

That during the civil rights movement, Baldwin advocated for racial equity and universal human dignity alongside civil rights luminaries, including Medgar Evers, Maya Angelou, Nina Simone, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.

He described his work as bearing witness to the truth and observed that no society can smash the social contract and be exempt from the consequences.

The designation of a day is fitting to commemorate the life and legacy of James Baldwin, whose influence on this nation and the city continues today.

So I would like to thank our committee staff for putting this together and making this vote happen and leading uh on the work.

And I will now ask the clerk to call the roll.

Thank you.

Good morning, William Martin, Committee Clerk, roll call vote committee on civil and human rights resolution 218.

Chair Nurse.

I vote aye.

Felice.

Aye.

Aye.

Hanif.

Aye.

Stevens.

Aye.

And I would like to also say I'm really excited because the next Tuesday we'll be having our first inaugural Black Pride ball in the Bronx.

And so we will be definitely shouting out James Baldwin.

And thank you to my deputy chief for pushing this type of work.

By vote of five in the affirmative, zero in the negative, and no abstentions.

Resolution has been approved by the committee.

Madam Chair, that is a full committee.

Thank you, Clerk.

Thanks, committee.

Hearing's over.