5 things to know about James Baldwin

In hindsight that’s something of a timid description of a writer whose career took him from poverty of interwar Harlem to a commune in Provence, via high times at the heart of Paris’ liberal arts scene of the 1950s, and a prominent position in the fractious and dangerous American civil rights movement of the 1960s. All whilst delivering insightful critiques on the racial disparity of the US through a series of novels, essays and plays.

Baldwin’s is a life which deserves your attention, and to set you on your way, here are five things to know.

He was a teenage preacher

Despite having a fractious relationship with his step-father, the young Baldwin followed in his footsteps between the ages of 14 and 17 by becoming active as a preacher at Fireside, a small Pentecostal church in Harlem. According to Baldwin’s biographer, James Campbell, it was whilst preaching at Fireside that Baldwin ‘learned that he had authority as a speaker and could do things with a crowd’.

In an interview in his later years Baldwin reflected on the impact of his time preaching. ‘Those three years in the pulpit… that is what really turned me into a writer, really, dealing with all that anguish and that despair and that beauty’. It’s also a period very directly reflected in Baldwin’s works, most notably his semi-autobiographical first novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, but also in The Amen Corner, his play about a female church pastor in a similar Harlem church.

He wrote his breakthrough works in Europe

Though his work is synonymous with documenting and exploring the experiences of Black America in the mid-20th century, Baldwin’s breakthrough works were written in Europe. In 1948, at the age of 24, wishing to escape the racism of the United States, and the homophobia of Harlem, he moved to Paris, funding his passage with a grant from a Rosenwald Fellowship for an unfinished photo-essay book. 

In 1952, during a time spent living with his lover Luicen Happersberger in a Swiss Alpine village, Baldwin finished his eponymous first novel Go Tell It on the Mountain. Telling the story of a teenager in 1930s Harlem, and his relationship with his family and his church, it was published the following year to rave reviews and regularly features in lists of the top 100 novels of the 20th century. Also published whilst Baldwin was living in Europe were his acclaimed first collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son, and his first play The Amen Corner. And Paris would also provide the backdrop for his second novel, 1956’s Giovanni’s Room, the story of an American in Paris torn between his love for a man and his love for a woman.

He became a prominent figure in the civil rights movement

Baldwin returned to the US in the summer of 1957, a time of high racial tension, particularly in the southern states. Editor of Partisan Review, Philip Rahv, suggested Baldwin report on what was happening in the American South, which he did, interviewing people in Charlotte and Montgomery. He produced two essays from this trip – ‘Nobody Knows’ for Partisan Review and ‘The Hard Kind of Courage’ published in Harper’s – and would go on to pen several more about the civil rights movement in subsequent years, including those which would become his 1963 book The Fire Next Time.

His time writing on the movement led to him joining the Congress of Racial Equality, and in 1963 he undertook a tour of the southern states lecturing on racial inequality, occupying a space between that of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. Recognised for his incisive analysis of racism within the US, Baldwin became a prominent figure of the campaign in the national press, featuring on the cover of Time magazine in May 1963, and being invited to meet with Attorney General Robert F Kennedy for a fractious, but landmark discussion on race relations in the US.

His life brought him into contact with some remarkable people

Throughout Baldwin’s remarkable life he weaved a path that brought him into close contact with a veritable who’s who of the 20th century. Whilst at High School in the Bronx he worked on the school newspaper with the photographer Richard Avedon and writer Emile Capouya, the latter of which would introduce him to painter Beauford Delaney.

Whilst in Paris a job at Café de Flore led to him meeting famous French intellectuals Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre, as well as the writers Truman Capote and Mason Hoffenberg, and poets Themistocles Hoetis and Stephen Spender. Here he would also meet Maya Angelou and Chester Himes and, on a voyage back to the US in 1952, Dizzy Gillespie.

After his return to the US in 1957, he would become friends with many prominent leaders of the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Medger Evers. He also became to many other notable stars of the day, such as actors Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier and Marlon Brando, as well as musicians Nina Simone, Miles Davis and Ray Charles, who would often visit him at his home in the South of France where he lived from 1970 until his death in 1987.

He became ostracised in his later years

In the years following the publication of The Fire Next Time, Baldwin began to receive criticism from other more radical Black leaders for what they perceived as a more conciliatory, pacifist view on the issues of racial inequality. Leaders such as Eldridge Cleaver also used Baldwin’s homosexuality against him in an effort to ostracise him from the movement. In 1970, in reaction to this ostracisation, as well as the assassinations of a number of his close friends from the civil-rights movement, Baldwin returned to France, settling in the small town of Saint-Paul-de-Vence where he would remain until his death in 1987.

Baldwin continued to write during his time in the Saint-Paul-de-Vence, and though these later works weren’t as acclaimed at the time of publication, they have been brought back to the foreground in the 21st century, particularly through the rise of social movements such as Black Lives Matter. His 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk was adapted for a highly-acclaimed film in 2018, bringing Baldwin to a whole new audience, more than thirty years on from his passing. And much as he has been cherished for his portrayal of the realities of Black America, Baldwin has also posthumously been embraced by LGBTQ activists and writers for his pioneering exploration of sexual identity and queer relationships in his work.

Join us on Sunday 21 July as we celebrate the life of James Baldwin here at the Southbank Centre, with a trio of talks discussing the life, works and impact of the writer.