Born in Harlem, NY, in 1924, James Baldwin had a calling from a young age to be a writer and activist during the Civil Rights Movement. At age 24, he moved to France so he could write more freely and be liberated from racism and homophobia. He later returned to the United States when schools began to integrate but never stayed. He died in St. Paul de Vence, France, in 1987. To celebrate the author’s centennial, here are five of his lesser-known essays and where you can find them.
James Baldwin and “Everybody’s Protest Novel”
Baldwin’s first published essay in Paris’s Zero magazine began a feud with another famous American author. In literary circles, other writers believed that Baldwin was Richard Wright’s protégé because of how the two wrote about racism in the United States, and they seemed to have a lot in common. For example, both authors were monitored by the FBI: Wright was affiliated with Communism, and according to the FBI, so was Baldwin (though he considered himself more of a Socialist). Thus, rather than subjecting himself to the hostility of McCarthyism, Wright moved to Paris, France. Baldwin moved to France in 1948.
In this scathing essay, Baldwin criticized protest novels, writing, “The ‘protest’ novel, so far from being disturbing, is… a mirror of our confusion, dishonesty, panic, trapped and immobilized in the sunlit prison of the American Dream. They are fantasies, connecting nowhere with reality, sentimental.” Baldwin connected his two examples of protest novels, citing the similarities between them: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Richard Wright’s Native Son. Baldwin wrote that “the contemporary Negro novelist and the dead New England woman are locked together in a deadly, timeless battle.” In Baldwin’s eyes, both works contributed nothing to the progress of racial equality; in fact, all they did was reinforce a narrative that Black Americans were less than white Americans.
Despite Baldwin’s incredible literary prowess, in this essay, he simply calls Uncle Tom’s Cabin “a very bad novel.” He understood that Beecher Stowe’s goal was to bring attention to the horrors of slavery and that all protest novels were meant to bring freedom and awareness to the oppressed. However, Baldwin notes she never answered the most important question, which is why white people felt the need to have slaves in the first place. He likens the enlightenment Beecher Stowe wanted her readers to feel to the flame of an angry mob preparing to burn a witch at the stake.
According to Baldwin, Wright also failed his readers with Native Son, believing that the protagonist, Bigger Thomas, was always set up for failure. Bigger Thomas was controlled by hatred and fear; he believed that he was subhuman, and he believed he was worthless solely because he was Black. Baldwin writes that Bigger Thomas is “Uncle Tom’s descendent, flesh of his flesh.” Wright, understandably, took the essay as a personal insult rather than seeing it as a general critique of protest novels. Wright went on to publicly insult Baldwin, using homophobic slurs and belittling his writing. As a result, the two lost all contact with each other.
Where to read it: Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin and James Baldwin: Collected Essays, edited by Toni Morrison, published by the Library of America, 1998.
The New Lost Generation
While authors like Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein were romantically labeled as “the lost generation,” Baldwin felt Black people who left the United States were more accurately defined as “displaced” or “visible expatriate[s].” In this deeply personal essay originally published in Esquire in July 1961, Baldwin offers the justification for his self-imposed exile from the United States. After his best friend committed suicide at the age of 24 by jumping off the George Washington Bridge in 1946, he felt he could no longer stay in America.
Baldwin recalls that one of their last interactions was an argument about hope for a better, more equitable United States. Baldwin claims that he “didn’t give a damn, besides what happened to the miserable, the unspeakably petty world.” And when it came to love, Baldwin said, “You’d better forget about that, my friend. That train has gone.” Immediately regretting his callousness, this conversation was the first time Baldwin saw his friend cry. His friend was in a relationship with a white woman whose family disapproved of the interracial relationship and was also the victim of a hate crime. He writes, “He was my best friend, and for the first time in our lives I could do nothing for him.”
Baldwin left the United States on Nov. 11, 1948, with $40 in his pocket for the sake of his survival: “…I was absolutely certain, from the moment I learned of his death, that I, too, if I stayed here, would come to a similar end… my end, even if I should not physically die, would be infinitely more horrible than my friend’s suicide.” Baldwin also felt that the racism and homophobia in the United States would never allow him to lead a happy, safe, liberated life. From 1948 to 1957, Baldwin lived mostly in Paris, France, though he did travel throughout Europe, writing, “What Europe stills gives an American—or gave us—is the sanction, if one can accept it, to become oneself. No artist can survive without this acceptance.”
Where to read it: The Price of the Ticket Collected Nonfiction 1948-1985 James Baldwin
St. Martin’s/Marek New York 1985
The Creative Process
In this essay, Baldwin holds artists responsible for being disturbers of the peace. He writes, “The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.” This darkness includes those states or experiences that are universal to every person: birth, suffering, love, and death.
Though Baldwin believed that being an artist in the United States was not necessarily more dangerous than in other parts of the world, he described the conditions as “very particular.” Baldwin recognized that the United States often tries to hide its dark past. In other essays, he mentions the cruel treatment of Native Americans, slaves, Asian people, and other minorities who were victims of discrimination and racism, all while the United States touted itself as the land of the free. Baldwin deemed artists responsible for exposing these lies.
Where to read it: The Price of the Ticket Collected Nonfiction 1948-1985 James Baldwin
St. Martin’s/Marek New York 1985
A Talk to Teachers
With discussions of censuring critical race theory and banning books about race, gender, sexuality, and class, this essay is as relevant now as it was when it was originally published in The Saturday Review in December 1963. “The Creative Process” outlines the responsibility of the artist to the world, while “A Talk to Teachers” recognizes the difficulties educators face. Despite criticism from parents and government officials, Baldwin encourages teachers to create students who are enlightened so they can understand the problems of the world rather than pretend they do not exist. Baldwin regarded the purpose of education as such:
“The paradox of education is precisely this—that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions… But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around. What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society.”
Baldwin continues to write about his own experiences in which he learned that education differs between white and Black children. He remembers one of the first times he went to Park Avenue in New York City as a child and saw the major contrasts between Park Avenue and his home of Harlem: downtown New York City was cleaner, richer, and whiter. He noted that the Black people in this part of New York City were automatically presumed to be grocery boys or messengers because that is how white people perceived them. It is the responsibility of educators to inform children of the rampant racism in the United States—from redlining housing neighborhoods to separate schools to legislation like Jim Crow laws in the South. To pretend these issues do not exist is an incredible disservice to the children of this nation.
Bringing in his preacher roots and utilizing parallelism, Baldwin declares that if he were a teacher, he would make Black students know that they do not have to live in a country that disrespects them, that they can and should rebel against these unfair and racist policies: “I would teach him that if he intends to get to be a man, he must at once decide that he is stronger than this conspiracy and that he must never make his peace with it. And that one of his weapons for refusing to make his peace with it and for destroying it depends on what he decides he is worth.”
Where to read it: The Price of the Ticket Collected Nonfiction 1948-1985 James Baldwin St. Martin’s/Marek New York 1985
James Baldwin, Faulkner, and Desegregation
Much like his criticism of Wright and Beecher Stowe, Baldwin was not at all impressed with American writer William Faulkner. Baldwin accurately pointed out that it seemed Faulkner never realized that the Confederacy rejoined the Union, believing himself to be someone of the South but not necessarily the United States. Baldwin uses Faulkner as an example of a proverbial white Southerner writing, “It is only the American Southerner who seems to be fighting, in his own entrails, a peculiar, ghastly, and perpetual war with all the rest of the country.” Baldwin writes that Faulkner should not speak of desegregation because not only are his beliefs that the country should “go slow,” when it comes to racial equality, but he cannot speak of it without bringing up the Confederacy.
According to Baldwin, when asked about desegregation, Faulkner always discussed his own family, who lived in Mississippi for generations, owned enslaved people, and his ancestors fought and died in the Civil War. Baldwin points out that Faulkner failed to mention that Black people and Northerners also died during the war. The romanticization of history, specifically Southern history, corrupts people into believing that desegregation came at the cost of the Confederacy.
The protests, court cases, and legislation meant to provide Black Americans with equality were never recognized by Faulkner because he most likely did not acknowledge the courage and sacrifice Black people were making in the fight for equality. Baldwin writes, “He is part of a country which boasts that it has never lost a war; but he is also the representative of a conquered nation.” Baldwin implores that if progress and desegregation are going to happen, we cannot listen to Faulkner and wait for progress. The change must occur now.
Where to read it: The Price of the Ticket Collected Nonfiction 1948-1985 James Baldwin St. Martin’s/Marek New York 1985 and James Baldwin: Collected Essays, edited by Toni Morrison, published by the Library of America, 1998, and Nobody Knows My Name by James Baldwin
