James Baldwin African American activist, novelist, and poet whose passion for the topic of race in America made him a significant voice, especially in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in the United States and, afterward, throughout much of Europe, where he later on in his life, passed away. Baldwin was indeed the oldest of nine children and was born and raised in Harlem, New York City. Along with his siblings and close relatives, Baldwin also experienced poverty as a child. Between his later years of high school, he worked as a preacher in a small revivalist church during his downtime.
It wasn’t until December 1st, 1962, that James Baldwin publicly released a piece titled “A Letter to My Nephew”. This was one of Baldwin’s most sentimental pieces of literature written in his time as the letter was about how racism directly impacted his brother, the father of Baldwin’s nephew and namesake James, and how racism still transcends America today.
“I said it was intended that you should perish, in the ghetto, perish by never being allowed to go beyond and behind the white man’s definition, by never being allowed to spell your proper name. You have, and many of us have, defeated this intention and by a terrible law, a terrible paradox, those innocents who believed that your imprisonment made them safe are losing their grasp of reality.”
Directly after high school, he started seeking work often underpaid, and began studying independently, leading to a literary apprenticeship in one of New York’s cosmopolitan districts. Shortly after this, he left for Paris in 1948 where he spent the next near-decade of his life. While away from America, he went on to write novels such as his first “Go Tell it on The Mountain” in 1953 and “Notes of a Native Son” published in 1955. Unfortunately, Baldwin passed due to stomach cancer at his home in France in the year 1987.
