James Baldwin History
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February is Black History Month so, we thought we’d celebrate the role that a few (maybe to some, relatively unknown) gay black men have played in history, to advance diversity, inclusion, and modern gay awareness. We began with Bayard Rustin and below is part 2 of the series, where we explore the life and legacy of James Baldwin.
James Arthur “Jimmy” Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987), was an American, an author, a fierce civil and social rights critic, and ultimately, a gay rights inspirationalist.
Growing up in Harlem, in his teen years (early 1940’s) Baldwin realized he was gay and began to feel smothered by being both an African American in a racist society, and a gay man in homophobic America. The only “out” gay black men of the time were him and Bayard Rustin.
In 1948 at the age of 24, Baldwin decided to move to France to escape the racism and homophobia of the U.S. While in France, Baldwin became an avid writer and poet.
As a novelist, he brought to light the challenges, social aspects, and complexities blacks, gays, and bisexual men had to face at the time, as well as the internal struggles that these groups faced for acceptance.
In his book, Giovanni’s Room (1956), he gives an interpretation of the life of an American living in Paris, and the feelings and frustrations he has about the relationships he’s having with other men in his life; specifically, the feelings for a certain Italian bartender (Giovanni) that he met at a gay bar in Paris. When his American publisher refused to release it, fearing that its gay subplots would alienate his core audience, he published it in England instead.
Many of his books, essays and interviews were passed over by literary critics of the time, because they openly discussed homosexuality and homophobia with passion and fierce emotion. The term ‘Baldwinesque’ was coined after him, referring to his shockingly articulate and flamboyant personality.
Throughout his career, Baldwin continued to test the limits of the established norm with his writings and outspokenness, and wrote and said what he wanted. In the early 60’s he became a known spokesperson for civil rights and, just as Bayard Rustin, advocated for nonviolence. He was subsequently featured on the May 17, 1963, cover of Time Magazine. Baldwin later received several literary honors and awards for his writings; most notably for his best-selling essay, The Fire Next Time, which was the first essay in history to spend forty-one weeks in the top five of the N.Y. Times Bestseller List.
In a 1987 television interview, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, Baldwin is asked about the decriminalization of homosexuality and the prejudice against homosexuals and says, “Love is where you find it,” and goes on to say, “No one has a right to try to tell another human being whom he or she can or should love.”
Baldwin died of stomach cancer later that year, in Saint-Paul-de-Vence commune in France.
In public and in his writings, Baldwin displayed a hope for a better tomorrow, that even today is uplifting. He wrote to promote equality at all costs. He inspires us to be persistent in fighting for recognition of our humanity; exactly as we are, whether that be gay, bi, trans, or queer. In his book The Last Interview and other Conversations, Baldwin asserts, “I was not born to be what someone said I was. I was not born to be defined by someone else, but by myself and myself only.”
Black History Month, Part one features the life and legacy of Bayard Rustin.
Black History Month, Part three features the life and legacy of Melvin ‘Mel’ Boozer.
Got a story yourself and want to share it? Send an email to social@planetromeo.com
James Arthur Baldwin, fiction writer, essayist, dramatist, and poet, was born on August 2, 1924 in Harlem, New York during the Harlem Renaissance. After graduating from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx in 1942, he began his formal career as a writer. Baldwin was inspired by Richard Wright, despite his being called to the ministry at age fourteen in the Pentecostal faith and church dominated by his father, David Baldwin.
Although James Baldwin emerged as a major American literary voice by 1953 when he published his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, his candid and militant essays found in Nobody Knows my Name (1961) and The Fire Next Time (1963) identified his writing with the emerging Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Baldwin stood with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, when the civil rights leader delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.
Like John Grimes, the protagonist of his autobiographical novel, Go Tell it on the Mountain, Baldwin struggled with his racial, sexual, and spiritual identities. In his second novel, Giovanni’s Room (1956), he seeks to illustrate through his treatment and characterization of his main characters the validity of homosexual love. Baldwin also unabashedly explores the spectrum and complexity of heterosexual and homosexual love in Another Country (1962). Identifying himself as “a lover born in a loveless world,” Baldwin’s themes of race, sexual orientation, and the multifaceted power of love remained the central focus of his other novels and stories including Going to Meet the Man (1965), Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone (1968), If Beale Street Could Talk (1974), and his last novel, Just Above My Head (1979).
Baldwin was considered by many literary critics to be a better essayist than novelist. His work appeared regularly in such mainstream literary magazines as Harper’s, The New Yorker, Esquire, and Partisan Review. His elegant, graceful, and candid prose; as well as his provocative socio-politically indicting voice in essays such as “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” “The Fire Next Time,” “Nobody Knows My Name,” and “No Name in the Street,” placed him in the vanguard of the most important mid twentieth-century American writers.
James Baldwin also authored two plays, The Amen Corner (1968) and Blues for Mister Charlie (1964), and published a collection of poems, Jimmy’s Blues (1985). His collections of essays include Notes of a Native Son (1955), Nobody Knows My Name (1961), The Fire Next Time (1963), No Name in the Streets (1972), The Devil Finds Work (1976), and The Evidence of Things Not Seen (1985).
Baldwin’s work addressed major aspects of the black experience. His themes, ranging from black church culture to the antipathy between the police and black urban male dwellers, were celebrated and critiqued in Baldwin’s collected work. Baldwin also made music—jazz, blues, and gospel—a central force in the world of his characters.
James Arthur Baldwin died in France, his adopted home, in 1987, and where he had once noted that for the first time he had been called simply “an American.” Baldwin had lived in France from 1948 to 1962 when he returned to the United States to participate in the Civil Rights Movement. After the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Baldwin returned permanently to Europe to escape the racism and homophobia that threatened to suffocate his life in the United States.
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COPY Samuels, W. (2007, January 23) James Baldwin (1924-1987). Retrieved from https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/baldwin-james-1924-1987/
Warren Carson, “James Baldwin.” Encyclopedia of African American
Literature. Edited by Wilfred D. Samuels (New York: Facts on File,
2007); David Leeming, James Baldwin (New York: Knopf, 1994).
BlackPast.org is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization. All donations are tax deductible.
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James Baldwin History
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