James Baldwin was born in the New York district of Harlem in 1924, when the world was already deeply racist. Poverty was rampant and there was police violence. Baldwin grew up with eight siblings. His stepfather was a strict Baptist preacher who greatly influenced him and he initially became a preacher himself.
But Baldwin did not want to accept the boundaries imposed upon him by society. He had a dream, and that was to write. First, he published reviews, followed by essays and short stories. New York, even the whole of the US, became too constricted for him. He felt oppressed both as a Black person and as a gay man. He moved to France where he ended up staying 40 years—with interruptions.
A wanderer between worlds
The novels that made Baldwin famous were written in his adopted home of France. In Go Tell It on the Mountain, which was published in 1953, he wrote about his childhood and teenage experiences in his hometown Baptist church. Giovanni’s Room (1956) caused a stir because it was about a bisexual man’s search for identity.
Baldwin returned to the US for a few more years. It was the time of the African American civil rights movement, in which he became an important figure. He was friends with civil rights icons Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and the singer Nina Simone. Baldwin was driven by the hope for change and for reconciliation. He wanted neither a white nor a Black nation. His vision was a nation of individuals, regardless of color; a vision that he believed could only be achieved in America. And yet there was also a great deal of anger, as he confessed in a 1961 radio interview: “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost all of the time—and in one’s work.”
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Baldwin’s ambivalent relationship with Africa
The 1960s not only saw the civil rights movement in the US, but also independence movements on the African continent, with which Baldwin had an ambivalent relationship. His ancestors had been brought to the US as slaves. This, he wrote, uprooted him and all his descendants and alienated them from Africa. But on a trip to West Africa, he felt like an intruder. He abandoned his plan to write a series of articles about Africa, out of respect, he said.
Berlin journalist Rene Aguigah has just published a biography of the writer, titled James Baldwin. The Witness—A Portrait.” In an interview with DW, Aquigah said, “Africa was important to Baldwin. At that time, many African Americans were interested in Africa — and therefore also in their own history. In Baldwin’s case, there was also the fact that his stepfather’s mother lived with his family, and she was born into slavery. That means he was in touch with this history.”
James Baldwin (left) with singer Sammy Davis Jr. and US civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.(right) | Photo Credit: Imago Images/DW
Rediscovered by Black Lives Matter
With the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, the civil rights movement also lost its momentum. Baldwin returned to Europe, resigned and angry. The American dream, he declared, was over for him. His view of the US became that of a distant observer. Baldwin himself was somewhat forgotten.
It was the Black Lives Matter movement that brought him and his work back into the public consciousness, especially his sharp-eyed essays. In them, he analyses the everyday violence and racism that had not yet been overcome. His biographer Rene Aguigah recommends one of Baldwin’s essay volumes to newcomers as introductory reading: The Fire Next Time (1963). It is a comprehensive look at the situation of African Americans in the early 1960s and a good introduction because, in it, Baldwin touches on many aspects of his own life—focusing on the major political circumstances.
James Baldwin died of cancer in 1987 at the age of 63. He is buried in Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.
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