Debate: Baldwin vs Buckley

About the show

“Is The American Dream At The Expense Of The American Negro?”

This was the question on February 18, 1965, when an overflow crowd packed the Cambridge Union to witness a historic televised debate between James Baldwin — the leading literary voice of the civil rights movement — and William F. Buckley Jr., America’s most prominent conservative intellectual.

The stage was set for an extraordinary confrontation: Baldwin’s call for a moral revolution in race relations against Buckley’s defence of the American establishment. Their exchange laid bare the deep divisions at the heart of American democracy — divisions whose echoes continue to shape our present.

In restaging this debate, the american vicarious returns Baldwin and Buckley’s words to public conversation through the voices of contemporary artists. Sixty years later, the arguments remain piercing, the stakes undiminished, the questions still demanding our attention.