James Baldwin, What or who is an artist ? Full speech from 1963

On May 21, 1963 James Baldwin was invited to give a speech at the University of Chicago. As he describes in his introduction his 'topic' was 'The moral responsibility of the artist'. It is easy to imagine what people might have expected at the time. It was the height of the struggle for civil rights in America and Baldwin was such a central part of that cause. But the speech that he gave went so much further..... For me this is one of, if not the best descriptions of why art is so important. Baldwin dares to talk about politics, religion, spirituality, literature and the human condition, he does talk about America in the 60's and he does talk about civil rights. But whats sits above all of these things is his belief in art as the way human beings (all of us) can believe in life, in reality, again.