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On July 7, 1968, James Baldwin took the dais at the World Council of Churches meeting in Uppsala, Sweden, the headline speaker of a panel address called "White Racism or World Community?"

In 2003, a set of two open-reel audio tape recordings of the event came to the Presbyterian Historical Society via the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. In celebration of the 49th anniversary of the event, we'd like to share an excerpt from his speech about the passage from petitioner to revolutionary undertaken by Stokely Carmichael.

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--by Ed Wicklein

It is an amazing thing that Americans moved west from the thirteen colonies so rapidly, even before the Revolution. The Presbyterian Church had a challenge keeping up with the migration to organize churches and to follow up with the creation of presbyteries and synods. The experience of Missouri and Illinois was typical. Already by 1800, Americans outnumbered the French in Missouri and, surely also, in nearby Illinois.

We know that Scotch-Irish Presbyterians from...