James Baldwin
(1924-1987)

James Baldwin, born in 1924 in New York City became a novelist, essayist, and playwright. Raised in the Black district of Harlem, he started writing after an early career as a child preacher. He wrote about racial conflicts and injustices in the United States, explored the personal lives of African-Americans in the mid-twentieth century, and became a major interpreter of the struggles of American Blacks. Like many Black writers of his time, Baldwin felt that he had to leave the United States and its institutional racism in order to develop his talents, moving to Paris where he spent most of his life. He was made a commander of the Legion of Honor, France's highest civilian award.

Baldwin's first novel, Go Tell it on the Mountain (1953), largely autobiographical, detailed his early childhood, religious encounters, and his family's life in the South. His essays, Notes of a Native Son (1956), described the lives of African-Americans.

Beginning in 1958, Baldwin's writings became more militant and were directed at the mistreatment of Blacks at the height of the civil rights struggle. The Fire Next Time (1961) and Nobody Knows My Name (1963) were powerful collections of essays that expressed the reaction of Blacks to treatment by whites. These novels established Baldwin as a major literary voice. Baldwin was a major supporter of the civil rights struggle and movement with Dr. Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, and others. He supported it with his presence, money, and passionate literary works. Baldwin never forgot from where he came from and he did all he could to reduce the hatred of Whites toward his people.

Other works by Baldwin include Another Country (1962), Blues for Mr. Charlie (1968), Going to Meet the Man (1965), Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (1968), Black Anti-Semitism and Jewish Racism (1969), A Rap on Race (1971), No Name in the Street (1972), A Dialogue (1973), If Beale Street Could Talk (1974), The Devil Finds Work (1976), Just Above My Head (1979), and The Evidence of Things Not Seen (1986). This book was the result of his observations at the trial in Atlanta for the murder of twenty-eight Black children in 1981. When he died he was working on a biography of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Medgar Edwards.