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New Clinton High School
College/University
Career
Gallery of James Baldwin
1955
James Baldwin, photographed by Carl Van Vechten.
Gallery of James Baldwin
1960
Paris, France
James Baldwin below Auguste Rodin's statue of Honore de Balzac.
Gallery of James Baldwin
1963
New York, United States
Portrait of American author James Baldwin as he sits beside a desk and typewriter.
Gallery of James Baldwin
1964
New York, United States
James Baldwin, American novelist, writer, playwright, poet, and civil rights activist.
Gallery of James Baldwin
1964
New York, New York, United States
View of American author and playwright James Baldwin (1924 - 1987) as he sits backstage at the ANTA (American National Theater and Academy) Playhouse. He was there to attend the opening of his play 'Blues for Mr. Charlie.'
Gallery of James Baldwin
1972
American Writer James Baldwin
Gallery of James Baldwin
James Baldwin
Gallery of James Baldwin
James Baldwin
Gallery of James Baldwin
Thousands gathered at a rally to protest the murder of the children of Birmingham and to demand federal protection of negro people.
Baldwin (right of center) with Hollywood actors Charlton Heston and Marlon Brando on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Sidney Poitier (rear) and Harry Belafonte (right of Brando) can also be seen in the crowd.
Framed by American actor Charleton Heston (1923 - 2008) (left) and singer Harry Belafonte (right, with a button on his lapel), writer James Baldwin (1924 - 1987) (center left) talks with actor Marlon Brando (1924 - 2004) in the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
Portrait of American writer and social critic James Baldwin (1924 - 1987) as he sits on the floor, a cigarette in one hand. He wears a button-down collar shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
View of American author and playwright James Baldwin (1924 - 1987) as he sits backstage at the ANTA (American National Theater and Academy) Playhouse. He was there to attend the opening of his play 'Blues for Mr. Charlie.'
The author James Baldwin smiles while addressing the crowd from the speaker's platform, after participating in the march from Selma to Montgomery in support of voting rights.
American religious and Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr (1929 - 1968) speaks from a pulpit in front of the Montgomery State Capitol building at the conclusion of the Selma to Montgomery March.
James Baldwin at the London launch of his new book "No Name on the Street", James Baldwin born in Harlem, often wrote about racism and homosexuality and as a self-confessed homosexual, he was at the forefront in condemning discrimination against the gay and lesbian movement
Historic Plaque unveiled by Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation at 81 Horatio Street, where James Baldwin lived in the late 1950s and early 1960s during one of his most prolific and creative periods.
American writer James Baldwin gives an interview to Harlem Desir, founder of SOS Racisme, a French anti-racism group. Baldwin is actively involved in discrimination issues.
James Baldwin, novelist and essayist, who has been elected a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the nation's highest honor society of the arts. Undated publicity handout photograph.
James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic. He was an important African American prolific writer of novels, poetry, short stories, plays and essays, as well as a civil rights activist. Baldwin's essays explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th-century America.
Background
He would be the first child of the nine children his mother, Emma Berdis Jones (1904 - 1999) would give birth to. James Baldwin would never know who his biological father was. When Baldwin was an infant, his mother, Emma Berdis Jones, divorced his father because of drug abuse and moved to Harlem, New York, where she married a preacher, David Baldwin. The family was very poor. James spent much time caring for his several younger brothers and sisters. At age ten, he was beaten by a gang of police officers. His adoptive father, whom James in essays called simply his father, appears to have treated James—versus James's siblings—with singular harshness.
Education
James Baldwin the prestigious, mostly Jewish DeWitt Clinton High School, in Bedford Park, Bronx(class of 1942), where, along with Richard Avedon, he worked on the school magazine—Baldwin was its literary editor. After high school, Baldwin studied at The New School, finding an intellectual community. At age fourteen he became a member of the Pentecostal church in Harlem where he began preaching at that time too.
In 1953, Baldwin's first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, a semi-autobiographical bildungsroman, was published. Baldwin's first collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son appeared two years later. Baldwin 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, stirred controversy when it was first published in 1956 due to its explicit homoerotic content.Baldwin was again resisting labels with the publication of this work: despite the reading public's expectations that he would publish works dealing with the African American experience, Giovanni's Room is predominantly about white characters. Baldwin's next two novels, Another Country and Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, are sprawling, experimental worksdealing with black and white characters and with heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual characters. These novels struggle to contain the turbulence of the 1960s: they are saturated with a sense of violent unrest and outrage.
Baldwin's lengthy essay Down at the Cross (frequently called The Fire Next Time after the title of the 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 Baldwin was touring the South speaking about the restive Civil Rights movement. The essay talked about the uneasy relationship between Christianity and the burgeoning Black Muslim movement. Baldwin's next book-length essay, No Name in the Street, 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 have been largely overlooked by critics, though even these texts are beginning to receive attention. Eldridge Cleaver's vicious homophobic attack on Baldwin in Soul on Ice and elsewhere and Baldwin's return to southern France contributed to the sense that he was not in touch with his readership. Always true to his own convictions rather than to the tastes of others, Baldwin continued to write what he wanted to write. His two novels written in the 1970s, If Beale Street Could Talk and Just Above My Head, placed a strong emphasis on the importance of black families, and he concluded his career by publishing a volume of poetry, Jimmy's Blues as well as another book-length essay, The Evidence of Things Not Seen, which was an extended meditation inspired by the Atlanta Child Murders of the early 1980s.
Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son(1961)
A Talk to Teachers(1963)
The Fire Next Time(1963)
No Name in the Street(1972)
The Devil Finds Work(1976)
The Evidence of Things Not Seen(1985)
The Price of the Ticket(1985)
novel
Go Tell It on the Mountain(1953)
Giovanni's Room(1956)
Another Country(1962)
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone(1968)
If Beale Street Could Talk(1974)
Just Above My Head91979)
Harlem Quartet (1987)
photography
Nothing Personal (with Richard Avedon, photography) (1964)
play
The Amen Corner(1954)
Blues for Mister Charlie(1964)
poem
Jimmy's Blues(1983)
story
Going to Meet the Man(1965)
Religion
At age 14, Baldwin joined the Pentecostal Church and became a Pentecostal preacher. The difficulties of life, as well as his abusive stepfather, who was a preacher, delivered him to the church. During a euphoric prayer meeting, Baldwin converted, and soon became junior minister at the Fireside Pentecostal Assembly. He drew larger crowds than his father did.
Baldwin was recorded singing "Precious Lord", a gospel song by Thomas A. Dorsey. And although he criticized Christianity for, as he explained, reinforcing the system of American slavery by palliating the pangs of oppression, he praised religion for inspiring some American blacks to defy oppression. Baldwin once wrote, "If the concept of God has any use, it is to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God can't do that, it's time we got rid of him." Despite this sentiment, Baldwin never referred to himself as an atheist.
Politics
Baldwin aligned himself with the ideals of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).By the Spring of 1963, Baldwin had become so much a spokesman for the Civil Rights Movement that for its May 17 issue on the turmoil in Birmingham, Alabama, Time magazine put James Baldwin on the cover.
Baldwin also made a prominent appearance at the Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. on August 28, 1963, with Belafonte and long time friends Sidney Poitier and Marlon Brando. After a bomb exploded in a Birmingham church not long after the March on Washington, Baldwin called for a nationwide campaign of civil disobedience in response to this "terrifying crisis."