James Baldwin
“
Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
”
James Baldwin was born in 1924 in Harlem, the upper Manhattan neighborhood in New York City, to a single mother. At the age of three, his mother, Emma Jones, married David Baldwin, a Baptist minister. Despite having a strained relationship with his father, Baldwin followed in the elder Baldwin’s footsteps, working as a preacher in a small revivalist church between the ages of 14 and 16. Later in life, Baldwin would write about and draw upon this time in his life in the first of his novels, the semi-autobiographical Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), as well as in his play The Amen Corner (1965), about a woman evangelist. Growing up, Baldwin developed a passion for reading and a gift for writing. Working on his high school’s magazine--alongside future award-winning photographer Richard Avedon--Baldwin began publishing poems, short stories, and plays. After graduating from high school in 1942, Baldwin put college plans on hold while he helped support his family, which had grown to include seven younger half-siblings. During this time, he took a series of illpaid jobs, including laying railroad tracks in New Jersey for the Army, while also engaging in self-study and a literary apprenticeship in Greenwich Village. In 1943, Baldwin lost his father the same day (July 29) his eighth sibling was born. He moved to Greenwich Village soon after. Baldwin devoted himself to writing a novel, befriending writer Richard Wright, and eventually landing a fellowship in 1945 that covered his expenses. Baldwin’s essays and short stories began being published in national periodicals like The Nation, Partisan Review, and Commentary. Following the receipt of another fellowship, Baldwin moved to Paris, France, in 1948, where he lived for eight years. This also marked the beginning of Baldwin’s life as a “transatlantic commuter”--from 1969, Baldwin lived alternatively in the south of France, New York, and New England. Photo courtesy of blackpast.org
The shift to Paris in 1948 was also a move that Baldwin would later note gave him clarity as he looked back across the ocean and dealt with the realSYRACUSESTAGE EDUCATION
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