30- ] American Literature
James Baldwin, 1924-1987
James
Baldwin, in full James Arthur Baldwin, (born August 2, 1924, New York, New
York—died December 1, 1987, Saint-Paul, France), American essayist, novelist, and
playwright whose eloquence and passion on the subject of race in America made
him an important voice, particularly in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in the
United States and, later, through much of western Europe.
The
eldest of nine children, he grew up in poverty in the Black ghetto of Harlem in
New York City. From age 14 to 16 he was active during out-of-school hours as a
preacher in a small revivalist church, a period he wrote about in his
semiautobiographical first and finest novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953),
and in his play about a woman evangelist, The Amen Corner (performed in New
York City, 1965).
After
graduation from high school, he began a restless period of ill-paid jobs,
self-study, and literary apprenticeship in Greenwich Village, the bohemian
quarter of New York City. He left in 1948 for Paris, where he lived for the
next eight years. (In later years, from 1969, he became a self-styled
“transatlantic commuter,” living alternatively in the south of France and in
New York and New England.) His second novel, Giovanni’s Room (1956), deals with
the white world and concerns an American in Paris torn between his love for a
man and his love for a woman. Between the two novels came a collection of
essays, Notes of a Native Son (1955).
In
1957 he returned to the United States and became an active participant in the
civil rights struggle that swept the nation. His book of essays, Nobody Knows
My Name (1961), explores Black-white relations in the United States. This theme
also was central to his novel Another Country (1962), which examines sexual as
well as racial issues.
The
New Yorker magazine gave over almost all of its November 17, 1962, issue to a
long article by Baldwin on the Black Muslim separatist movement and other
aspects of the civil rights struggle. The article became a best seller in book
form as The Fire Next Time (1963). His bitter play about racist oppression,
Blues for Mister Charlie (“Mister Charlie” being a Black term for a white man),
played on Broadway to mixed reviews in 1964.
Though
Baldwin continued to write until his death—publishing works including Going to
Meet the Man (1965), a collection of short stories; the novels Tell Me How Long
the Train’s Been Gone (1968), If Beale Street Could Talk (1974), and Just Above
My Head (1979); and The Price of the Ticket (1985), a collection of
autobiographical writings—none of his later works achieved the popular and
critical success of his early work.
Literary
career
Baldwin's
first published work, a review of the writer Maxim Gorky, appeared in The
Nation in 1947. He continued to publish in that magazine at various times in
his career and was serving on its editorial board at his death in 1987.
1950s
In
1953, Baldwin's first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, a
semi-autobiographical bildungsroman was published. He began writing it when he
was only seventeen and first published it in Paris. His first collection of
essays, Notes of a Native Son appeared two years later. He continued to
experiment with literary forms throughout his career, publishing poetry and
plays as well as the fiction and essays for which he was known.
Baldwin's
second novel, Giovanni's Room, caused great controversy when it was first
published in 1956 due to its explicit homoerotic content. Baldwin again
resisted labels with the publication of this work. Despite the reading public's
expectations that he would publish works dealing with African American
experiences, Giovanni's Room is predominantly about white characters.
Go
Tell It on the Mountain (1953)
Baldwin
sent the manuscript for Go Tell It on the Mountain from Paris to New York
publishing house Alfred A. Knopf on February 26, 1952, and Knopf expressed
interest in the novel several months later. To settle the terms of his
association with Knopf, Baldwin sailed back to the United States on the SS Île
de France in April, where Themistocles Hoetis and Dizzy Gillespie were
coincidentally also voyaging—his conversations with both on the ship were
extensive. After his arrival in New York, Baldwin spent much of the next three
months with his family, whom he had not seen in almost three years. Baldwin
grew particularly close to his younger brother, David Jr., and served as best
man at David's wedding on June 27. Meanwhile, Baldwin agreed to rewrite parts
of Go Tell It on the Mountain in exchange for a $250 advance ($2,551 today) and
a further $750 ($7,653 today) paid when the final manuscript was completed.
When Knopf accepted the revision in July, they sent the remainder of the
advance, and Baldwin was soon to have his first published novel. In the
interim, Baldwin published excerpts of the novel in two publications: one
excerpt was published as "Exodus" in American Mercury and the other
as "Roy's Wound" in New World Writing. Baldwin set sail back to Europe
on August 28 and Go Tell It on the Mountain was published in May 1953.
Go
Tell It on the Mountain was the product of Baldwin's years of work and
exploration since his first attempt at a novel in 1938. In rejecting the
ideological manacles of protest literature and the presupposition he thought
inherent to such works that "in Negro life there exists no tradition, no
field of manners, no possibility of ritual or intercourse", Baldwin sought
in Go Tell It on the Mountain to emphasize that the core of the problem was
"not that the Negro has no tradition but that there has as yet arrived no
sensibility sufficiently profound and tough to make this tradition
articulate." Baldwin biographer David Leeming draws parallels between
Baldwin's undertaking in Go Tell It on the Mountain and James Joyce's endeavor
in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: to "encounter for the
millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul
the uncreated conscience of my race." Baldwin himself drew parallels between
Joyce's flight from his native Ireland and his own run from Harlem, and Baldwin
read Joyce's tome in Paris in 1950, but in Baldwin's Go Tell It on the
Mountain, it would be the Black American "uncreated conscience" at
the heart of the project.
The
novel is a bildungsroman that peers into the inward struggles of protagonist
John Grimes, the illegitimate son of Elizabeth Grimes, to claim his own soul as
it lies on the "threshing floor"—a clear allusion to another John,
the Baptist born of another Elizabeth. John's struggle is a metaphor for
Baldwin's own struggle between escaping the history and heritage that made him,
awful though it may be, and plunging deeper into that heritage, to the bottom
of his people's sorrows, before he can shuffle off his psychic chains, "climb
the mountain", and free himself. John's family members and most of the
characters in the novel are blown north in the winds of the Great Migration in
search of the American Dream and all are stifled. Florence, Elizabeth, and
Gabriel are denied love's reach because racism assured that they could not
muster the kind of self-respect that love requires. Racism drives Elizabeth's
lover, Richard, to suicide—Richard will not be the last Baldwin character to
die thus for that same reason. Florence's lover Frank is destroyed by searing
self-hatred of his own Blackness. Gabriel's abuse of the women in his life is
downstream from his society's emasculation of him, with mealy-mouthed
religiosity only a hypocritical cover.
The
phrase "in my father's house" and various similar formulations appear
throughout Go Tell It on the Mountain, and was even an early title for the
novel. The house is a metaphor at several levels of generality: for his own
family's apartment in Harlem, for Harlem taken as a whole, for America and its
history, and for the "deep heart's core". John's departure from the
agony that reigned in his father's house, particularly the historical sources
of the family's privations, came through a conversion experience. "Who are
these? Who are they" John cries out when he sees a mass of faces as he
descends to the threshing floor: "They were the despised and rejected, the
wretched and the spat upon, the earth's offscouring; and he was in their
company, and they would swallow up his soul." John wants desperately to
escape the threshing floor, but "[t]hen John saw the Lord" and
"a sweetness" filled him. The midwife of John's conversion is Elisha,
the voice of love that had followed him throughout the experience, and whose
body filled John with "a wild delight".Thus comes the wisdom that
would define Baldwin's philosophy: per biographer David Leeming:
"salvation from the chains and fetters—the self-hatred and the other
effects—of historical racism could come only from love."
Notes
of a Native Son (1955)
It
was Baldwin's friend from high school, Sol Stein, who encouraged Baldwin to
write an essay collection reflecting on his work thus far. Baldwin was
reluctant, saying he was "too young to publish my memoirs." Stein
persisted in his exhortations to his friend Baldwin, and Notes of a Native Son
was published in 1955. The book contained practically all the major themes that
would continue to run through Baldwin's work: searching for self when racial
myths cloud reality; accepting an inheritance ("the conundrum of color is
the inheritance of every American"); claiming a birthright ("my
birthright was vast, connecting me to all that lives, and to everyone,
forever"); the artist's loneliness; love's urgency. All the essays in
Notes were published between 1948 and 1955 in Commentary, The New Leader,
Partisan Review, The Reporter, and Harper's Magazine .The essays rely on
autobiographical detail to convey Baldwin's arguments, as all of Baldwin's work
does. Notes was Baldwin's first introduction to many white Americans and became
their reference point for his work: Baldwin often got asked, "Why don't
you write more essays like the ones in Notes of a Native Son?". The
collection's title alludes to both Richard Wright's Native Son and the work of
one of Baldwin's favorite writers, Henry James's Notes of a Son and Brother.
Notes
of a Native Son is divided into three parts: the first part deals with Black
identity as artist and human; the second part negotiates with Black life in
America, including what is sometimes considered Baldwin's best essay, the
titular "Notes of a Native Son"; the final part takes the
expatriate's perspective, looking at American society from beyond its shores.
Part One of Notes features "Everybody's Protest Novel" and "Many
Thousands Gone", along with "Carmen Jones: The Dark Is Light
Enough", a 1955 review of Carmen Jones written for Commentary where
Baldwin at once extols the sight of an all-Black cast on the silver screen and
laments the film's myths about Black sexuality. Part Two reprints "The Harlem
Ghetto" and "Journey to Atlanta" as prefaces for "Notes of
a Native Son". In "Notes of a Native Son", Baldwin attempts to
come to terms with his racial and filial inheritances. Part Three contains
"Equal in Paris", "Stranger in the Village",
"Encounter on the Seine", and "A Question of Identity".
Writing from the expatriate's perspective, Part Three is the sector of
Baldwin's corpus that most closely mirrors Henry James's methods: hewing out of
one's distance and detachment from the homeland a coherent idea of what it
means to be American.
Throughout
Notes, when Baldwin is not speaking in first-person, Baldwin takes the view of
white Americans. For example, in "The Harlem Ghetto", Baldwin writes:
"what it means to be a Negro in America can perhaps be suggested by the
myths we perpetuate about him."[133] This earned some quantity of scorn
from reviewers: in a review for The New York Times Book Review, Langston Hughes
lamented that "Baldwin's viewpoints are half American, half Afro-American,
incompletely fused."[133] Some others were nonplussed by the handholding
of white audiences, which Baldwin himself would criticize in later works.[133]
Nonetheless, most acutely in this stage in his career, Baldwin wanted to escape
the rigid categories of protest literature and he viewed adopting a white
point-of-view as a good method of doing so.
Giovanni's
Room (1956)
Shortly
after returning to Paris, Baldwin got word from Dial Press that Giovanni's Room
had been accepted for publication. Baldwin sent the final manuscript for the book
to his editor, James Silberman, on April 8, 1956, and the book was published
that autumn.
In
the novel, the protagonist David is in Paris while his fiancé Hella is in
Spain. David meets the titular Giovanni at the bar that Guillaume owns; the two
grow increasingly intimate and David eventually finds his way to Giovanni's
room.
David
is confused by his intense feelings for Giovanni and has sex with a woman in
the spur of the moment to reaffirm his sexuality. Meanwhile, Giovanni begins to
prostitute himself and finally commits a murder for which he is guillotined.
David's
tale is one of love's inhibition: he cannot "face love when he finds
it", writes biographer James Campbell.[140] The novel features a
traditional theme: the clash between the restraints of puritanism and the
impulse for adventure, emphasizing the loss of innocence that results.[140] The
inspiration for the murder part of the novel's plot is an event dating from
1943 to 1944.
A
Columbia University undergraduate named Lucien Carr murdered an older,
homosexual man, David Kammerer, who made sexual advances on Carr.The two were
walking near the banks of the Hudson River when Kammerrer made a pass at Carr,
leading Carr to stab Kammerer and dump Kammerer's body in the river.
To
Baldwin's relief, the reviews of Giovanni's Room were positive, and his family
did not criticize the subject matter.
Return
to New York
Even
from Paris, Baldwin heard the whispers of a rising Civil Rights Movement in his
homeland: in May 1954, the United States Supreme Court ordered schools to
desegregate "with all deliberate speed"; in August 1955 the racist
murder of Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi, and the subsequent acquittal of
his killers would burn in Baldwin's mind until he wrote Blues for Mister Charlie;
in December Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a
Montgomery bus; and in February 1956 Autherine Lucy was admitted to the
University of Alabama before being expelled when whites rioted. Meanwhile,
Baldwin was increasingly burdened by the sense that he was wasting time in
Paris. Baldwin began planning a return to the United States in hopes of writing
a biography of Booker T. Washington, which he then called Talking at the Gates.
Baldwin also received commissions to write a review of Daniel Guérin's Negroes
on the March and J. C. Furnas's Goodbye to Uncle Tom for The Nation, as well as
to write about William Faulkner and American racism for Partisan Review.
The
first project became "The Crusade of Indignation", published in July
1956. Baldwin suggests that the portrait of Black life in Uncle Tom's Cabin
"has set the tone for the attitude of American whites towards Negroes for
the last one hundred years", and that, given the novel's popularity, this
portrait has led to a unidimensional characterization of Black Americans that
does not capture the full scope of Black humanity. The second project turned
into the essay "William Faulkner and Desegregation". The essay was
inspired by Faulkner's March 1956 comment during an interview that he was sure
to enlist himself with his fellow white Mississippians in a war over
desegregation "even if it meant going out into the streets and shooting
Negroes". For Baldwin, Faulkner represented the "go slow"
mentality on desegregation that tries to wrestle with the Southerner's peculiar
dilemma: the South "clings to two entirely antithetical doctrines, two
legends, two histories"; the southerner is "the proud citizen of a
free society and, on the other hand, committed to a society that has not yet
dared to free itself of the necessity of naked and brutal oppression."
Faulkner asks for more time but "the time [...] does not exist. [...]
There is never time in the future in which we will work out our
salvation."
Baldwin
initially intended to complete Another Country before returning to New York in
the fall of 1957 but progress on the novel was trudging along, so he ultimately
decided to go back to the United States sooner. Beauford Delaney was
particularly upset about Baldwin's departure. Delaney had started to drink a lot
and was in the incipient stages of mental deterioration, now complaining about
hearing voices. Nonetheless, after a brief visit with Édith Piaf, Baldwin set
sail for New York in July 1957.
1960s
Baldwin's
third and fourth novels, Another Country (1962) and Tell Me How Long the
Train's Been Gone (1968), are sprawling, experimental works dealing with Black
and white characters, as well as with heterosexual, gay, and bisexual
characters.
Baldwin's
lengthy essay "Down at the Cross" (frequently called The Fire Next
Time after the title of the 1963 book in which it was published) similarly
showed the seething discontent of the 1960s in novel form. The essay was
originally published in two oversized issues of The New Yorker and landed
Baldwin on the cover of Time magazine in 1963 while he was touring the South
speaking about the restive Civil Rights Movement. Around the time of
publication of The Fire Next Time, Baldwin became a known spokesperson for
civil rights and a celebrity noted for championing the cause of Black
Americans. He frequently appeared on television and delivered speeches on
college campuses. The essay talked about the uneasy relationship between
Christianity and the burgeoning Black Muslim movement. After publication,
several Black nationalists criticized Baldwin for his conciliatory attitude.
They questioned whether his message of love and understanding would do much to
change race relations in America. The book was consumed by whites looking for
answers to the question: What do Black Americans really want? Baldwin's essays
never stopped articulating the anger and frustration felt by real-life Black
Americans with more clarity and style than any other writer of his generation.
1970s
and 1980s
Baldwin's
next book-length essay, No Name in the Street (1972), also discussed his own
experience in the context of the later 1960s, specifically the assassinations
of three of his personal friends: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther
King, Jr.
Baldwin's
writings of the 1970s and 1980s were largely overlooked by critics, although
they have received increasing attention in recent years. Several of his essays
and interviews of the 1980s discuss homosexuality and homophobia with fervor
and forthrightness.Eldridge Cleaver's harsh criticism of Baldwin in Soul on Ice
and elsewhere and Baldwin's return to southern France contributed to the
perception by critics that he was not in touch with his readership. As he had
been the leading literary voice of the civil rights movement, he became an
inspirational figure for the emerging gay rights movement.[151] His two novels
written in the 1970s, If Beale Street Could Talk (1974) and Just Above My Head
(1979), placed a strong emphasis on the importance of Black American families.
He concluded his career by publishing a volume of poetry, Jimmy's Blues (1983),
as well as another book-length essay, The Evidence of Things Not Seen (1985),
an extended reflection on race inspired by the Atlanta murders of 1979–1981.
Saint-Paul-de-Vence
Baldwin
lived in France for most of his later life. He also spent some time in
Switzerland and Turkey. Baldwin settled in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in the south of
France in 1970, in an old Provençal house beneath the ramparts of the famous
village. His house was always open to his friends who frequently visited him
while on trips to the French Riviera. American painter Beauford Delaney made
Baldwin's house in Saint-Paul-de-Vence his second home, often setting up his
easel in the garden. Delaney painted several colorful portraits of Baldwin.
Fred Nall Hollis also befriended Baldwin during this time. Actors Harry
Belafonte and Sidney Poitier were also regular house guests.
Many
of Baldwin's musician friends dropped in during the Jazz à Juan and Nice Jazz
Festivals. They included Nina Simone, Josephine Baker (whose sister lived in
Nice), Miles Davis, and Ray Charles. In his autobiography, Miles Davis wrote:
I'd
read his books and I liked and respected what he had to say. As I got to know
Jimmy we opened up to each other and became real great friends. Every time I
went to southern France to play Antibes, I would always spend a day or two out
at Jimmy's house in St. Paul de Vence. We'd just sit there in that great big
beautiful house of his telling us all kinds of stories, lying our asses off....
He was a great man.
Baldwin
learned to speak French fluently and developed friendships with French actor
Yves Montand and French writer Marguerite Yourcenar who translated Baldwin's
play The Amen Corner into French.
The
years Baldwin spent in Saint-Paul-de-Vence were also years of work. Sitting in
front of his sturdy typewriter, he devoted his days to writing and to answering
the huge amount of mail he received from all over the world. He wrote several
of his last works in his house in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, including Just Above My
Head in 1979 and Evidence of Things Not Seen in 1985. It was also in his
Saint-Paul-de-Vence house that Baldwin wrote his famous "Open Letter to My
Sister, Angela Y. Davis" in November 1970.
Death
On
December 1, 1987, Baldwin died from stomach cancer in Saint-Paul-de-Vence,
France. He was buried at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, near New York
City.
Fred
Nall Hollis took care of Baldwin on his deathbed. Nall had been friends with
Baldwin from the early 1970s when Baldwin would buy him drinks at the Café de
Flore. Nall recalled talking to Baldwin shortly before his death about racism
in Alabama. In one conversation, Nall told Baldwin "Through your books you
liberated me from my guilt about being so bigoted coming from Alabama and
because of my homosexuality." Baldwin insisted: "No, you liberated me
in revealing this to me."
At
the time of Baldwin's death, he was working on an unfinished manuscript called
Remember This House, a memoir of his personal recollections of civil rights
leaders Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Following his death,
publishing company McGraw-Hill took the unprecedented step of suing his estate
to recover the $200,000 advance they had paid him for the book, although the
lawsuit was dropped by 1990. The manuscript forms the basis for Raoul Peck's
2016 documentary film I Am Not Your Negro.
Following
Baldwin's death, a court battle began over the ownership of his home in France.
Baldwin had been in the process of purchasing his house from his landlady,
Mlle. Jeanne Faure. At the time of his death, Baldwin did not have full
ownership of the home, although it was still Mlle. Faure's intention that the
home would stay in the family. His home, nicknamed "Chez Baldwin",
has been the center of scholarly work and artistic and political activism. The
National Museum of African American History and Culture has an online exhibit
titled "Chez Baldwin" which uses his historic French home as a lens
to explore his life and legacy. Magdalena J. Zaborowska's 2018 book, Me and My
House: James Baldwin's Last Decade in France, uses photographs of his home and
his collections to discuss themes of politics, race, queerness, and
domesticity.
Over
the years, several efforts were initiated to save the house and convert it into
an artist residency. None had the endorsement of the Baldwin estate. In
February 2016, Le Monde published an opinion piece by Thomas Chatterton
Williams, a contemporary Black American expatriate writer in France, which
spurred a group of activists to come together in Paris. In June 2016, American
writer and activist Shannon Cain squatted at the house for 10 days in an act of
political and artistic protest. Les Amis de la Maison Baldwin, a French
organization whose initial goal was to purchase the house by launching a
capital campaign funded by the U.S. philanthropic sector, grew out of this
effort. This campaign was unsuccessful without the support of the Baldwin
Estate. Attempts to engage the French government in conservation of the
property were dismissed by the mayor of Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Joseph Le
Chapelain whose statement to the local press claiming "nobody's ever heard
of James Baldwin" mirrored those of Henri Chambon, the owner of the
corporation that razed his home. Construction was completed in 2019 on the apartment
complex that now stands where Chez Baldwin once stood.
Themes
Struggle
for self
In
all of Baldwin's works, but particularly in his novels, the main characters are
twined up in a "cage of reality" that sees them fighting for their
soul against the limitations of the human condition or against their place at
the margins of a society consumed by various prejudices. Baldwin connects many
of his main characters—John in Go Tell It On The Mountain, Rufus in Another
Country, Richard in Blues for Mister Charlie, and Giovanni in Giovanni's
Room—as sharing a reality of restriction: per biographer David Leeming, each is
"a symbolic cadaver in the center of the world depicted in the given novel
and the larger society symbolized by that world".[187] Each reaches for an
identity within their own social environment, and sometimes—as in If Beale
Street Could Talk's Fonny and Tell me How Long The Train's Been Gone's Leo—they
find such an identity, imperfect but sufficient to bear the world. The singular
theme in the attempts of Baldwin's characters to resolve their struggle for
themselves is that such resolution only comes through love. Here is Leeming at
some length:
Love
is at the heart of the Baldwin philosophy. Love for Baldwin cannot be safe; it
involves the risk of commitment, the risk of removing the masks and taboos
placed on us by society. The philosophy applies to individual relationships as
well as to more general ones. It encompasses sexuality as well as politics,
economics, and race relations. And it emphasizes the dire consequences, for
individuals and racial groups, of the refusal to love.
— David
Adams Leeming, James Baldwin: A Biography
Social
and political activism
Baldwin
returned to the United States in the summer of 1957 while the civil rights
legislation of that year was being debated in Congress. He had been powerfully
moved by the image of a young girl, Dorothy Counts, braving a mob in an attempt
to desegregate schools in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Partisan Review editor
Philip Rahv had suggested he report on what was happening in the American
South. Baldwin was nervous about the trip but he made it, interviewing people
in Charlotte (where he met Martin Luther King Jr.), and Montgomery, Alabama.
The result was two essays, one published in Harper's magazine ("The Hard
Kind of Courage"), the other in Partisan Review ("Nobody Knows My
Name"). Subsequent Baldwin articles on the movement appeared in
Mademoiselle, Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, and The New Yorker, where
in 1962 he published the essay that he called "Down at the Cross",
and the New Yorker called "Letter from a Region of My Mind". Along
with a shorter essay from The Progressive, the essay became The Fire Next Time.
While
he wrote about the movement, Baldwin aligned himself with the ideals of the
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC). Joining CORE gave him the opportunity to travel across the
American South lecturing on his views of racial inequality. His insights into
both the North and South gave him a unique perspective on the racial problems
the United States was facing.
In
1963 he conducted a lecture tour of the South for CORE, traveling to Durham and
Greensboro in North Carolina, and New Orleans. During the tour, he lectured to
students, white liberals, and anyone else listening about his racial ideology,
an ideological position between the "muscular approach" of Malcolm X
and the nonviolent program of Martin Luther King, Jr. Baldwin expressed the
hope that socialism would take root in the United States.
It
is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most
ferocious enemy justice can have.
—James
Baldwin
By
the spring of 1963, the mainstream press began to recognize Baldwin's incisive
analysis of white racism and his eloquent descriptions of the Negro's pain and
frustration. In fact, Time featured Baldwin on the cover of its May 17, 1963,
issue. "There is not another writer", said Time, "who expresses
with such poignancy and abrasiveness the dark realities of the racial ferment
in North and South."
In
a cable Baldwin sent to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy during the
Birmingham, Alabama crisis, Baldwin blamed the violence in Birmingham on the
FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, Mississippi Senator James Eastland, and President Kennedy
for failing to use "the great prestige of his office as the moral forum
which it can be." Attorney General Kennedy invited Baldwin to meet with
him over breakfast, and that meeting was followed up with a second, when
Kennedy met with Baldwin and others Baldwin had invited to Kennedy's Manhattan
apartment. This meeting is discussed in Howard Simon's 1999 play, James
Baldwin: A Soul on Fire. The delegation included Kenneth B. Clark, a
psychologist who had played a key role in the Brown v. Board of Education
decision; actor Harry Belafonte, singer Lena Horne, writer Lorraine Hansberry,
and activists from civil rights organizations. Although most of the attendees
of this meeting left feeling "devastated", the meeting was an
important one in voicing the concerns of the civil rights movement, and it
provided exposure of the civil rights issue not just as a political issue but
also as a moral issue.
James
Baldwin's FBI file contains 1,884 pages of documents, collected from 1960 until
the early 1970s. During that era of surveillance of American writers, the FBI
accumulated 276 pages on Richard Wright, 110 pages on Truman Capote, and just
nine pages on Henry Miller.
Baldwin
also made a prominent appearance at the March on Washington for Jobs and
Freedom on August 28, 1963, with Belafonte and long-time friends Sidney Poitier
and Marlon Brando.
Baldwin's
sexuality clashed with his activism. The civil rights movement was hostile to
homosexuals. The only out gay men in the movement were Baldwin and Bayard
Rustin. Rustin and King were very close, as Rustin received credit for the
success of the March on Washington. Many were bothered by Rustin's sexual
orientation. King himself spoke on the topic of sexual orientation in a school
editorial column during his college years, and in reply to a letter during the
1950s, where he treated it as a mental illness which an individual could
overcome. King's key advisor, Stanley Levison, also stated that Baldwin and
Rustin were "better qualified to lead a homo-sexual movement than a civil
rights movement".[198] The pressure later resulted in King distancing
himself from both men. Despite his enormous efforts within the movement, due to
his sexuality, Baldwin was excluded from the inner circles of the civil rights
movement and was conspicuously uninvited to speak at the end of the March on
Washington.
At
the time, Baldwin was neither in the closet nor open to the public about his
sexual orientation. Although his novels, specifically Giovanni's Room and Just
Above My Head, had openly gay characters and relationships, Baldwin himself
never openly stated his sexuality. In his book, Kevin Mumford points out how
Baldwin went his life "passing as straight rather than confronting
homophobes with whom he mobilized against racism".
After
a bomb exploded in a Birmingham church three weeks after the March on
Washington, Baldwin called for a nationwide campaign of civil disobedience in
response to this "terrifying crisis". He traveled to Selma, Alabama,
where SNCC had organized a voter registration drive; he watched mothers with
babies and elderly men and women standing in long lines for hours, as armed
deputies and state troopers stood by—or intervened to smash a reporter's camera
or use cattle prods on SNCC workers. After his day of watching, he spoke in a
crowded church, blaming Washington—"the good white people on the
hill". Returning to Washington, he told a New York Post reporter the
federal government could protect Negroes—it could send federal troops into the
South. He blamed the Kennedys for not acting. In March 1965, Baldwin joined
marchers who walked 50 miles from Selma, Alabama, to the capitol in Montgomery
under the protection of federal troops.
Nonetheless,
he rejected the label "civil rights activist", or that he had
participated in a civil rights movement, instead agreeing with Malcolm X's
assertion that if one is a citizen, one should not have to fight for one's
civil rights. In a 1964 interview with Robert Penn Warren for the book Who
Speaks for the Negro?, Baldwin rejected the idea that the civil rights movement
was an outright revolution, instead calling it "a very peculiar revolution
because it has to... have its aims the establishment of a union, and a...
radical shift in the American mores, the American way of life... not only as it
applies to the Negro obviously, but as it applies to every citizen of the
country."[201] In a 1979 speech at UC Berkeley, Baldwin called it,
instead, "the latest slave rebellion".
In
1968, Baldwin signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest"
pledge, vowing to refuse to make income tax payments in protest against the
Vietnam War.
Inspiration
and relationships
A
great influence on Baldwin was the painter Beauford Delaney. In The Price of
the Ticket (1985), Baldwin describes Delaney as
...
the first living proof, for me, that a black man could be an artist. In a
warmer time, a less blasphemous place, he would have been recognized as my
teacher and I as his pupil. He became, for me, an example of courage and
integrity, humility and passion. An absolute integrity: I saw him shaken many
times and I lived to see him broken but I never saw him bow.
Later
support came from Richard Wright, whom Baldwin called "the greatest black writer
in the world". Wright and Baldwin became friends, and Wright helped
Baldwin secure the Eugene F. Saxon Memorial Award. Baldwin's essay "Notes
of a Native Son" and his collection Notes of a Native Son allude to
Wright's novel Native Son. In Baldwin's 1949 essay "Everybody's Protest
Novel", however, he indicated that Native Son, like Harriet Beecher
Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, lacked credible characters and psychological
complexity, and the friendship between the two authors ended. Interviewed by
Julius Lester, however, Baldwin explained "I knew Richard and I loved him.
I was not attacking him; I was trying to clarify something for myself." In
1965, Baldwin participated in a debate with William F. Buckley, on the topic of
whether the American dream had been achieved at the expense of African
Americans. The debate took place at Cambridge Union in the UK. The spectating
student body voted overwhelmingly in Baldwin's favor.
In
1949 Baldwin met and fell in love with Lucien Happersberger, a boy aged 17,
though Happersberger's marriage three years later left Baldwin distraught. When
the marriage ended they later reconciled, with Happersberger staying by
Baldwin's deathbed at his house in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Happersberger died on
August 21, 2010, in Switzerland.
Baldwin
was a close friend of the singer, pianist, and civil rights activist Nina
Simone. Langston Hughes, Lorraine Hansberry, and Baldwin helped Simone learn
about the Civil Rights Movement. Baldwin also provided her with literary
references influential on her later work. Baldwin and Hansberry met with Robert
F. Kennedy, along with Kenneth Clark and Lena Horne and others in an attempt to
persuade Kennedy of the importance of civil rights legislation.
Baldwin
influenced the work of French painter Philippe Derome, whom he met in Paris in
the early 1960s. Baldwin also knew Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston, Billy Dee
Williams, Huey P. Newton, Nikki Giovanni, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Genet (with
whom he campaigned on behalf of the Black Panther Party), Lee Strasberg, Elia
Kazan, Rip Torn, Alex Haley, Miles Davis, Amiri Baraka, Martin Luther King,
Jr., Dorothea Tanning, Leonor Fini, Margaret Mead, Josephine Baker, Allen
Ginsberg, Chinua Achebe, and Maya Angelou. He wrote at length about his
"political relationship" with Malcolm X. He collaborated with
childhood friend Richard Avedon on the 1964 book Nothing Personal.
Maya
Angelou called Baldwin her "friend and brother" and credited him for
"setting the stage" for her 1969 autobiography I Know Why the Caged
Bird Sings. Baldwin was made a Commandeur de la Légion d'Honneur by the French
government in 1986.
Baldwin
was also a close friend of Nobel Prize–winning novelist Toni Morrison. Upon his
death, Morrison wrote a eulogy for Baldwin that appeared in The New York Times.
In the eulogy, entitled "Life in His Language", Morrison credits
Baldwin as being her literary inspiration and the person who showed her the
true potential of writing. She writes:
You
knew, didn't you, how I needed your language and the mind that formed it? How I
relied on your fierce courage to tame wildernesses for me? How strengthened I
was by the certainty that came from knowing you would never hurt me? You knew,
didn't you, how I loved your love? You knew. This then is no calamity. No. This
is jubilee. "Our crown," you said, "has already been bought and
paid for. All we have to do," you said, "is wear it.
Legacy
and critical response
Literary
critic Harold Bloom characterized Baldwin as "among the most considerable
moral essayists in the United States".
Baldwin's
influence on other writers has been profound: Toni Morrison edited the Library
of America's first two volumes of Baldwin's fiction and essays: Early Novels
& Stories (1998) and Collected Essays (1998). A third volume, Later Novels
(2015), was edited by Darryl Pinckney, who had delivered a talk on Baldwin in
February 2013 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of The New York Review of
Books, during which he stated: "No other black writer I'd read was as
literary as Baldwin in his early essays, not even Ralph Ellison. There is
something wild in the beauty of Baldwin's sentences and the cool of his tone,
something improbable, too, this meeting of Henry James, the Bible, and
Harlem."
One
of Baldwin's richest short stories, "Sonny's Blues", appears in many
anthologies of short fiction used in introductory college literature classes.
A
street in San Francisco, Baldwin Court in the Bayview neighborhood is named
after Baldwin.
In
1987, Kevin Brown, a photo-journalist from Baltimore founded the National James
Baldwin Literary Society. The group organizes free public events celebrating
Baldwin's life and legacy.
In
1992, Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, established the James
Baldwin Scholars program, an urban outreach initiative, in honor of Baldwin,
who taught at Hampshire in the early 1980s. The JBS Program provides talented
students of color from under-served communities an opportunity to develop and
improve the skills necessary for college success through coursework and
tutorial support for one transitional year, after which Baldwin scholars may
apply for full matriculation to Hampshire or any other four-year college
program.
Spike
Lee's 1996 film Get on the Bus includes a Black gay character, played by Isaiah
Washington, who punches a homophobic character, saying: "This is for James
Baldwin and Langston Hughes."
His
name appears in the lyrics of the Le Tigre song "Hot Topic", released
in 1999.
In
2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante included James Baldwin on his list of 100
Greatest African Americans.
In
2005, the United States Postal Service created a first-class postage stamp
dedicated to Baldwin, which featured him on the front with a short biography on
the back of the peeling paper.
In
2012, Baldwin was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display that
celebrates LGBT history and people.
In
2014, East 128th Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues was named
"James Baldwin Place" to celebrate the 90th anniversary of Baldwin's
birth. He lived in the neighborhood and attended P.S. 24. Readings of Baldwin's
writing were held at The National Black Theatre and a month-long art exhibition
featuring works by New York Live Arts and artist Maureen Kelleher. The events
were attended by Council Member Inez Dickens, who led the campaign to honor Harlem
native's son; also taking part were Baldwin's family, theatre and film
notables, and members of the community.
Also
in 2014, Baldwin was one of the inaugural honorees in the Rainbow Honor Walk, a
walk of fame in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood celebrating LGBTQ people
who have "made significant contributions in their fields."
Also
in 2014, The Social Justice Hub at The New School's newly opened University
Center was named the Baldwin Rivera Boggs Center after activists Baldwin,
Sylvia Rivera, and Grace Lee Boggs.
In
2016, Raoul Peck released his documentary film I Am Not Your Negro. It is based
on James Baldwin's unfinished manuscript, Remember This House. It is a
93-minute journey into Black history that connects the past of the Civil Rights
Movement to the present of Black Lives Matter. It is a film that questions
Black representation in Hollywood and beyond.
In
2017, Scott Timberg wrote an essay for the Los Angeles Times ("30 years
after his death, James Baldwin is having a new pop culture moment") in
which he noted existing cultural references to Baldwin, 30 years after his
death, and concluded: "So Baldwin is not just a writer for the ages, but a
scribe whose work—as squarely as George Orwell's—speaks directly to
ours."[225]
In
June 2019 Baldwin's residence on the Upper West Side was given landmark
designation by New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission.[226][227]
In
June 2019, Baldwin was one of the inaugural fifty American "pioneers,
trailblazers, and heroes" inducted on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor
within the Stonewall National Monument (SNM) in New York City's Stonewall
Inn.[228][229] The SNM is the first U.S. national monument dedicated to LGBTQ
rights and history,[230] and the wall's unveiling was timed to take place
during the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.[231]
At
the Paris Council of June 2019, the city of Paris voted unanimously by all
political groups to name a place in the capital in the name of James Baldwin.
The project was confirmed on June 19, 2019, and announced for the year 2020. In
2021, Paris City Hall announced that the writer would give his name to the very
first media library in the 19th arrondissement, which is scheduled to open in
2023.[232]
Works
Novels
1953.
Go Tell It on the Mountain (semi-autobiographical) ,1956. Giovanni's Room , 1962.
Another Country, 1968. Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone ,1974. If Beale
Street Could Talk , 1979. Just Above My Head , 1956. Sonny's Blues
Essays
and short stories
Many
essays and short stories by Baldwin were published for the first time as part
of collections (e.g. Notes of a Native Son). Others, however, were published
individually at first and later included with Baldwin's compilation books. Some
essays and stories of Baldwin's that were originally released on their own
include:
1949.
"Everybody's Protest Novel". Partisan Review (June issue)
1953.
"Stranger in the Village". Harper's Magazine.[234][235]
1954.
"Gide as Husband and Homosexual". The New Leader.
1956.
"Faulkner and Desegregation". Partisan Review.
1957.
"Sonny's Blues". Partisan Review.
1957.
"Princes and Powers". Encounter.
1958.
"The Hard Kind of Courage". Harper's Magazine.
1959.
"The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American". The New York
Times Book Review.
1959.
"Nobody Knows My Name: A Letter from the South". Partisan Review.
1960.
"Fifth Avenue, Uptown: A Letter from Harlem". Esquire.
1960.
"The Precarious Vogue of Ingmar Bergman". Esquire.
1961.
"A Negro Assays the Negro Mood". New York Times Magazine.
1961.
"The Survival of Richard Wright". Reporter.
1961.
"Richard Wright". Encounter.
1962.
"Letter from a Region of My Mind". The New Yorker.
1962.
"My Dungeon Shook". The Progressive.
1963.
"A Talk to Teachers"
1967.
"Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They're Anti-White". New York Times
Magazine.
1976.
The Devil Finds Work — a book-length essay published by Dial Press.
Collections
Many
essays and short stories by Baldwin were published for the first time as part
of collections, which also included older, individually-published works (such as
above) of Baldwin's as well. These collections include:
1955.
Notes of a Native Son
1961.
Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son
1963.
The Fire Next Time
1965.
Going to Meet the Man
1972.
No Name in the Street
1983.
Jimmy's Blues
1985.
The Evidence of Things Not Seen
1985.
The Price of the Ticket
2010.
The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings.
Plays
and audio
1954
The Amen Corner (play) , 1964. Blues for Mister Charlie (play)
1990.
A Lover's Question (album). Les Disques Du Crépuscule – TWI 928–2.
Collaborative
works
1964.
Nothing Personal, with Richard Avedon (photography)
1971.
A Rap on Race, with Margaret Mead
1971.
A Passenger from the West, narrative with Baldwin conversations, by Nabile
Farès; appended with long-lost interview.
1972.
One Day When I Was Lost (orig.: A. Haley)
1973.
A Dialogue, with Nikki Giovanni
1976.
Little Man Little Man: A Story of Childhood, with Yoran Cazac
2004.
Native Sons, with Sol Stein
Posthumous
collections
1998.
Early Novels & Stories: Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni's Room,
Another Country, Going to Meet the Man, edited by Toni Morrison.
1998.
Collected Essays: Notes of a Native Son, Nobody Knows My Name, The Fire Next
Time, No Name in the Street, The Devil Finds Work, Other Essays, edited by Toni
Morrison.
2014.
Jimmy's Blues and Other Poems.
2015.
Later Novels: Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, If Beale Street Could
Talk, Just Above My Head, edited by Darryl Pinckney.
2016.
Baldwin for Our Times: Writings from James Baldwin for an Age of Sorrow and
Struggle, with notes and introduction by Rich Blint.
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