James Baldwin, Master Teacher
James Baldwin was born on August 2, 1924, in Harlem Hospital (NYC). This year marks the 100th anniversary of his birth. He was a global citizen and first-class public intellectual who used various platforms to reach people in all corners of the world. Baldwin broached questions about race, sexuality, class, and social justice raised by very few writers during and after his time. His prophetic voice lives on through his essays, novels, poetry, and plays.
Baldwin continues to be an inspiration for countless people, especially Black and LGBTQ communities. Those who embrace intersectionality can see that concept defined in his works. He was intersectionality before the word was coined.
One of his greatest contributions is his impact on writers. For example, Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison once said, “I am completely indebted to Jimmy Baldwin’s prose. It liberated me as a writer.” The great Maya Angelou also said, “James Baldwin was born for truth. It called upon him to tell it on the mountains, to preach it in Harlem, to sing it on the Left Bank in Paris.”
I was first introduced to Baldwin as a teenager in high school in the late ’70s, at a rally for African American judge Bruce Wright at the Zion Baptist Church in Harlem. There had been an effort to have Wright removed from the bench, in part because he dared set bail for Black and low-income people so that they could afford it. The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association called him “Turn ’Em Loose Bruce.” Baldwin was at that rally to speak on behalf of Wright, who was his friend, and what stood out for me was how fierce he was. I would later see that same fire in his book The Evidence of Things Not Seen.
The picture below shows his visit to the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University in 1979.
For additional information on Baldwin’s life and work, visit Princeton University’s Baldwin Circles.
Sources:
The Evidence of Things Not Seen. James Baldwin, Holt, Rinehart and Winston: New York, 1985.
Nothing Personal (back book cover). James Baldwin, Beacon Press: Boston, 2021.
“Buce McM. Wright, Erudite Judge Whose Bail Rulings Caused an Uproar, Dies at 86.” Robert D. McFadden, New York Times, March 26, 2005.
James Baldwin at the Africana Center.
Kofi Acree