THE RELEVANT QUEER: James Baldwin, Activist, Novelist, Essayist, Playwright and Poet

“I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.”

TRQ: James Baldwin, Born August 2, 1924

Activist novelist, essayist, playwright, and poet James Baldwin was born on August 2, 1924. Baldwin is known for taking a hard look at the psychological and cultural pressures connected with race, class and sexuality in the United States. He wrote for The New Yorker and his books like Nobody Knows My Name (1961) and Another Country (1963) became bestsellers. Director Barry Jenkins translated Baldwin’s novel If Beale Street Could Talk (1974) into a film for which Regina King won an Academy Award. Friends with Maya Angelou, Nina Simone, Marlon Brando, Miles Davis, Langston Hughes and Malcolm X, Baldwin influenced the wider culture artistically and politically. 

James Arthur Baldwin was born in Harlem, New York to Emma Jones, a single mother. She later married Baptist preacher David Baldwin, who proved to be a harsh stepfather. 

Baldwin developed a passion for both reading and writing in his childhood years. At age 10, he was abused by New York police officers, which he would write about later. He wrote his first article, “Harlem — Then and Now,” at age 13 for the magazine at his elementary school located on 128th Street. He also wrote the school’s song. 

Baldwin was a youth minister for Harlem Pentecostal Church from ages 14 to 16. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School with future photographer Richard Avedon, and together they worked on the student magazine. During these years, Baldwin met and was mentored by painter Beauford Delaney in Greenwich Village, and further dedicated himself to his writing. 

After graduating high school, Baldwin worked to support his eight siblings. In 1943, Baldwin’s stepfather died of tuberculosis on the same day his youngest sibling was born. The funeral was held on Baldwin’s 19th birthday, the same day the 1943 Harlem riot started. 

In 1944, Baldwin met actor Marlon Brando. The two lived together for a short time but remained friends for decades. In 1945 Baldwin was working on a novel when he met writer Richard Wright, who helped him land a fellowship to cover his living expenses. Baldwin soon started publishing his work in The Nation, Partisan Review and Commentary. 

At age 24, Baldwin moved to Paris for another fellowship, which allowed him to escape the hopelessness of being Black in prejudiced America. The relocation sparked a dramatic change, and Baldwin’s participation in the Left Bank culture led to his writing more about his racial background. 

In an interview with The New York Times, Baldwin explained, “Once I found myself on the other side of the ocean, I see where I came from very clearly… I am the grandson of a slave, and I am a writer. I must deal with both.” 

In Paris, Baldwin socialized with Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Josephine Baker, Nina Simone, Miles Davis and Ray Charles. In 1949 he fell in love with Lucien Happersberger, who was 17 at the time. Though Happersberger was married for a short time, the two remained close throughout Baldwin’s life. 

In 1953, Baldwin published his semi-autobiographical first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, which he had started writing at age 17. He landed the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1954. His Notes of a Native Son (1955), an essay collection, followed next. 

Giovanni’s Room (1956), Baldwin’s next novel, was controversial due to its explicit homoeroticism and focus on white characters. 

His writing grew more experimental, and he began to deal with characters of different racial backgrounds and sexualities. The interracial relationship in Another Country (1962) created new controversies. 

“If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy.” — James Baldwin, 1969 

Like its predecessor, Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1961) presents a stark look at the Black experience in America and made the bestsellers list. This theme is further developed in The Fire Next Time (1963). The book sold a million copies. Baldwin made the cover of Time magazine that year. 

“If we…do not falter in our duty now, we may be able…to end the racial nightmare.” — James Baldwin, 1963 

After writing the play Blues for Mister Charlie, which debuted on Broadway in 1964, Baldwin published with Richard Avedon, Nothing Personal, a book paying tribute to slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers. 

In 1969 Maya Angelou published her autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and credited her “brother and friend” Baldwin with setting the stage for the book. In the 1970s, after his personal friends Evers, Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X were each assassinated, a darker disillusionment emerged in Baldwin’s work. 

“White people go around, it seems to me, with a very carefully suppressed terror of Black people—a tremendous uneasiness,” Baldwin said in a 1979 interview for ABC. “They don’t know what the Black face hides. They’re sure it’s hiding something. What it’s hiding is American history. What it’s hiding is what white people know they have done, and what they like doing. White people know very well one thing; it’s the only thing they have to know. They know this; everything else, they’ll say, is a lie. They know they would not like to be Black here. They know that, and they’re telling me lies. They’re telling me and my children nothing but lies.” 

Just as he had been a leader within the civil rights movement, so Baldwin emerged as a leader within the gay rights movement. The tension between the two movements lead to Baldwin being forcefully distanced from the civil rights movement and accusations that he had lost touch with his readers. Nevertheless, he continued writing about the truthful social and cultural experience as he lived and observed it. 

Baldwin spent the early 1980s teaching at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Hampshire College. He died at his home in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France from stomach cancer on December 1, 1987, with artist Fred Nall Hollis and longtime friend and lover Happersberger at his side. 

In 1992, Hampshire College established the James Baldwin Scholars program. In 2012, the Legacy Walk inducted Baldwin into their outdoor display celebrating LGBT 

history and people. The Rainbow Honor Walk in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood honored Baldwin in 2014. In 2019, Baldwin was inducted on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor within the Stonewall National Monument in New York City’s Stonewall Inn. In 2021, Paris City Hall announced that the first media library would be named after Baldwin, and is scheduled to open in 2023. 

About the Authors

Troy Wise is currently a PhD student at UAL Central St Martins and teaches fashion and graphic design at London College of Contemporary Arts. His background is in marketing and is founder and co-editor of Image Amplified. He lives in, and is continually fascinated by, the city of London.

Rick Guzman earned his most recent MA at UAL Central St Martins in Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries. He currently holds two MA’s and an MBA in the New Media, Journalism and International Business fields. Co-editor at Image Amplified since its start, he lives in London, is fascinated by history and is motivated by continuing to learn and explore. 

Sources:

Biography

Britannica

LA Times

NY Times

The Guardian