James Baldwin: Author and Civil Rights Activist
Posted on 19. Oct, 2009 by Leshell Hatley in Scholarly Celebrations
James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – November 30, 1987) was an America novelist, writer, playwright, poet, essayist, and civil rights activist.
Most of Baldwin’s work deals with racial and sexual issues in the mid-20th century in the United States. His novels are notable for the personal way in which they explore questions of identity as well as the way in which they mine complex social and psychological pressures related to being black and homosexual well before the social, cultural or political equality of these groups was improved.
When Baldwin was an infant, his mother, Emma Berdis Joynes, moved to Harlem, NY where she married a preacher, David Baldwin, who adopted James. The family was poor; and James and his adoptive father had a tumultuous relationship. James Baldwin attended the prestigious DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, where he worked on the school magazine together with Richard Avedon. At the age of 14, he joined the Pentecostal Church and became a Pentecostal preacher.
When he was 17 years old, Baldwin turned away from his religion and moved to Greenwich Village, a New York City neighborhood, famous for its artists and writers. Supporting himself with odd jobs, he began to write short stories, essays, and book reviews, many of which were later collected in the volume Notes of a Native Son (1955).
During this time Baldwin began to recognize his own homosexuality. In 1948, disillusioned by American prejudice against blacks and homosexuals, Baldwin left the United States and departed to Paris, France, where he would live as an expatriate for most of his later life. He also frequently stayed in Turkey during the 1960s.
On November 30, 1987 Baldwin died from stomach cancer in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. He was buried at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, near New York City.
In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed James Baldwin on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.
James Baldwin Stamp
One of Baldwin’s richest short stories, “Sonny’s Blues”, appears in many anthologies of short fiction used in introductory college literature classes.
-Obtained from and more information available on wikipedia.
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