WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: James Baldwin 0:00:02.360 --> 0:00:07.360 Happy Saturday. James Baldwin was born August second, nineteen twenty four, 0:00:07.600 --> 0:00:09.840 or one hundred and one years ago today, on the 0:00:09.920 --> 0:00:12.879 day this episode is coming out, so he is Today's 0:00:12.920 --> 0:00:17.480 Saturday classic. This episode originally came out on June seventeenth, 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:21.320 twenty twenty, so we recorded it in the immediate aftermath 0:00:21.400 --> 0:00:24.840 of the murder of George Floyd. That may Baldwin's writing 0:00:24.880 --> 0:00:27.640 and work felt deeply relevant in that moment, and that 0:00:27.680 --> 0:00:33.400 continues to be true today. Welcome to Stuff You Missed 0:00:33.400 --> 0:00:43.800 in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome 0:00:43.840 --> 0:00:47.400 to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. 0:00:47.680 --> 0:00:50.320 The last thing we recorded before I got to work 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:53.080 on today's episode was our June fifth behind the Scenes, 0:00:53.120 --> 0:00:56.040 and if you've listened to that, I was clearly having 0:00:56.040 --> 0:01:00.160 a hard time figuring out what to do next, and 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:02.400 when I remembered that I'd had James Baldwin on my 0:01:02.480 --> 0:01:06.840 list for a while. But my inward response was like, yes, obviously, 0:01:07.000 --> 0:01:10.600 James Baldwin. Of course, why didn't you even think of 0:01:10.640 --> 0:01:14.680 this before? This description by Jan Williams in a piece 0:01:14.800 --> 0:01:18.120 called Baldwin the Witness's testament, which was published in The 0:01:18.200 --> 0:01:21.480 Washington Post the day after Baldwin's death in nineteen eighty seven, 0:01:22.240 --> 0:01:26.880 illustrates why I had that response quote. Given the messy 0:01:26.959 --> 0:01:30.800 nature of racial hatred, of the half truths, blasphemies, and 0:01:30.880 --> 0:01:34.880 lies that make up American life, Baldwin's accuracy in reproducing 0:01:34.920 --> 0:01:38.680 that world stands as a remarkable achievement. His accuracy was 0:01:38.800 --> 0:01:41.600 key and his works the reader could resonate to the 0:01:41.600 --> 0:01:44.720 sounds of the street Corner as drawn by Baldwin, could 0:01:44.720 --> 0:01:48.040 feel the anger of Black Americans so long denied a 0:01:48.160 --> 0:01:51.120 role in American life. As Baldwin wrote about that anger, 0:01:51.720 --> 0:01:55.360 black people reading Baldwin knew he wrote the truth. White 0:01:55.360 --> 0:01:58.960 people reading Baldwin sensed his truth about the lives of 0:01:59.000 --> 0:02:03.400 black people in this of a racist nation. Interest in 0:02:03.520 --> 0:02:06.640 James Baldwin's work has just really grown in the United 0:02:06.680 --> 0:02:09.440 States over the last several years, in conjunction with the 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:13.359 Black Lives Matter movement. His nineteen sixty three book The 0:02:13.360 --> 0:02:17.280 Fire Next Time is frequently on anti racism reading lists. 0:02:17.320 --> 0:02:19.959 Sometimes it's paired up with Tana Hasse Coats Between the 0:02:20.000 --> 0:02:22.920 World and Me, which was inspired by it, or with 0:02:23.080 --> 0:02:25.920 The Fire This Time a New Generation Speaks about Race. 0:02:26.160 --> 0:02:29.280 That's a book that came out in twenty sixteen. Basically, 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:32.560 James Baldwin was a brilliant essayist and one of the 0:02:32.639 --> 0:02:35.519 chroniclers of the civil rights movement and a really powerful 0:02:35.600 --> 0:02:38.240 voice against racism. And that is why we are talking 0:02:38.280 --> 0:02:40.880 about him today. So we're going to start with his background. 0:02:41.360 --> 0:02:45.040 James Baldwin was born James Arthur Jones in Harlem, New York, 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:48.800 on August second, nineteen twenty four. His mother was Emma 0:02:48.800 --> 0:02:52.239 Burtist Jones, and she was a domestic worker when James 0:02:52.320 --> 0:02:54.679 was born. Emma was not married and she never told 0:02:54.760 --> 0:02:58.320 him who his biological father was. When James was three, 0:02:58.520 --> 0:03:01.440 his mother married David Baldie, who was a factory worker 0:03:01.480 --> 0:03:04.360 and an evangelical minister, and they went on to have 0:03:04.480 --> 0:03:08.079 eight children together. The family was really poor. They were 0:03:08.120 --> 0:03:10.720 living in a part of Harlem that Baldwin later called 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:14.600 Junkie's Hollow, and part of James's early years also took 0:03:14.639 --> 0:03:20.720 place during the Great Depression. David Baldwin was strict, unyielding, authoritarian, 0:03:20.760 --> 0:03:24.360 and cruel, including telling James that he was ugly and 0:03:24.400 --> 0:03:27.680 reminding him of the circumstances of his birth, and of 0:03:27.680 --> 0:03:31.360 course that was heavily stigmatized at the time. As an adult, 0:03:31.440 --> 0:03:35.720 Baldwin described the whole household constantly working to appease his stepfather. 0:03:36.440 --> 0:03:39.200 James also said David taught him to fight because he 0:03:39.240 --> 0:03:42.600 had to continually fight back with patience and a kind 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:46.160 of ruthless determination, because I had to endure it, to 0:03:46.280 --> 0:03:50.360 go under and come back up to wait. James Baldwin 0:03:50.400 --> 0:03:53.240 attributed his stepfather's treatment of him and his mother and 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:56.120 siblings as being the product of living as a proud 0:03:56.200 --> 0:03:59.600 man and a racist society where he just could not 0:03:59.720 --> 0:04:03.400 make enough money to really support his family. And Baldwin 0:04:03.520 --> 0:04:06.800 also credited his younger siblings as being a big part 0:04:06.840 --> 0:04:09.280 of what kept him off the streets and largely out 0:04:09.320 --> 0:04:12.640 of trouble in his youth. As the oldest, James was 0:04:12.640 --> 0:04:15.200 always helping to look after the younger ones, and that 0:04:15.280 --> 0:04:18.040 was something he described doing with a book in one hand, 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:22.600 because reading became one of his biggest means of escape. 0:04:22.680 --> 0:04:25.279 He liked to tell people that he read every volume 0:04:25.320 --> 0:04:27.880 in Harlem's library branches, and that he had to go 0:04:27.960 --> 0:04:30.440 to the New York Public Library on forty second Street 0:04:30.480 --> 0:04:32.599 to find any books that he hadn't read yet. He 0:04:32.680 --> 0:04:35.880 also credited religion with helping to keep him out of trouble. 0:04:36.480 --> 0:04:39.120 He had a religious conversion experience at the age of 0:04:39.160 --> 0:04:43.120 fourteen and became a youth minister at Fireside Pentecostal Assembly. 0:04:43.880 --> 0:04:46.479 He was a youth minister for three years, and during 0:04:46.520 --> 0:04:49.400 that time he crafted his use of language and his 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:53.680 speaking style. Throughout all this, James had been attending New 0:04:53.720 --> 0:04:57.400 York public schools, first at PS twenty four, whose principle 0:04:57.480 --> 0:05:00.200 was Gertrude Ayers. That was the first black principle new 0:05:00.279 --> 0:05:03.719 York City. From there, he moved to Frederick Douglass Junior 0:05:03.800 --> 0:05:07.080 High School, where Harlem Renaissance poet County Cullen was his 0:05:07.160 --> 0:05:10.040 French teacher and the director of the school's literary club. 0:05:10.760 --> 0:05:13.720 While at Frederick Douglas Junior High James was editor of 0:05:13.760 --> 0:05:16.719 the school's newspaper, The Douglas Pilot, and also tried to 0:05:16.720 --> 0:05:19.359 make money to help the family by shining shoes and 0:05:19.440 --> 0:05:23.000 selling shopping bags. For high school, James was selected to 0:05:23.040 --> 0:05:26.400 attend DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. This was 0:05:26.440 --> 0:05:29.200 one of New York's more elite schools, with a predominantly 0:05:29.279 --> 0:05:33.720 Jewish student body. There, James again worked on the school newspaper, 0:05:33.839 --> 0:05:37.280 The Magpie, and he excelled in his English and history courses. 0:05:37.960 --> 0:05:40.920 He also met painter Viewford Delaney, who became a friend 0:05:41.040 --> 0:05:43.880 and something of a mentor, as he demonstrated for Baldwin 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:47.239 that a black man could become an artist. James didn't 0:05:47.279 --> 0:05:49.680 do nearly as well in his other courses as he 0:05:49.720 --> 0:05:52.320 did in English and history, and his high school years 0:05:52.360 --> 0:05:56.160 were personally very turbulent. In addition to all the stresses 0:05:56.160 --> 0:05:59.320 of his home life, he had started to question his sexuality. 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:02.839 He had also started questioning the church as he began 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:05.839 to learn about the ways that Christianity had been used 0:06:05.880 --> 0:06:09.200 as a weapon during slavery, and as he heard people 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:13.000 within his church and his stepfather make anti Semitic comments. 0:06:13.279 --> 0:06:16.840 He ultimately left the church in nineteen forty one. James 0:06:16.920 --> 0:06:20.160 Baldwin graduated from high school in nineteen forty two, six 0:06:20.200 --> 0:06:23.799 months after the rest of his class. The internal turmoil 0:06:23.839 --> 0:06:27.200 connected to his faith in his sexuality contributed to a 0:06:27.200 --> 0:06:30.839 mental health crisis that derailed his studies. He had hoped 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:32.680 to go to the City College of New York, but 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:36.040 he couldn't afford a tuition Instead, he got a defense 0:06:36.080 --> 0:06:39.120 industry job in Bellmeade, New Jersey, to try to help 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:43.720 support his family financially. By this point, James's stepfather was 0:06:43.720 --> 0:06:46.920 struggling with his own mental health, with symptoms that included 0:06:46.960 --> 0:06:51.520 depression and paranoia. Baldwin's job in Bellmead involved building a 0:06:51.560 --> 0:06:55.479 new Army quartermaster depot, and it was Baldwin's first real 0:06:55.560 --> 0:06:59.880 experience with overt racism on the job. The US Army 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:03.200 still segregated, and Baldwin continued to act the way he 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:05.799 had acted back in Harlem when he was around white 0:07:05.880 --> 0:07:09.320 Southern service members, and they, of course expected him to 0:07:09.320 --> 0:07:11.800 be totally deferential to them and to stay out of 0:07:11.800 --> 0:07:15.800 their way. Of course, racism had existed in Harlem as well, 0:07:15.880 --> 0:07:18.880 but this was a whole different set of social expectations 0:07:19.160 --> 0:07:23.680 and consequences. Baldwin described this experience as learning what it 0:07:23.760 --> 0:07:26.760 meant to be a Negro. He refused to back down 0:07:26.760 --> 0:07:29.320 in the face of racism and harassment on the job, 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:32.440 and he was fired. A friend helped him get his 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:36.080 job back, and when the harassment resumed, he again pushed 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:39.120 back against it and was once again fired. On his 0:07:39.240 --> 0:07:42.560 last night in Bellmead, Baldwin and some friends were refused 0:07:42.600 --> 0:07:45.560 service at a diner because of their race, and Baldwin 0:07:45.720 --> 0:07:48.560 really reached a breaking point. He threw a water pitcher 0:07:48.640 --> 0:07:52.520 and that shattered the mirror behind the bar. He described 0:07:52.560 --> 0:07:56.480 this moment as revelatory, realizing that he had been angry 0:07:56.600 --> 0:07:59.160 enough to kill someone and that his own life was 0:07:59.200 --> 0:08:02.120 in danger. In him words quote from the Hatred I 0:08:02.200 --> 0:08:05.800 Carried in my own Heart. David Baldwin Senior died on 0:08:05.880 --> 0:08:09.200 July twenty ninth, nineteen forty three, which was also the 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:13.760 day James's youngest sibling, Paula Maria, was born. Two days later, 0:08:13.800 --> 0:08:17.560 on August first, an uprising swept through Harlem. It was 0:08:17.600 --> 0:08:20.320 sparked when a black soldier tried to intervene as a 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:23.040 white police officer was trying to arrest a black woman. 0:08:23.720 --> 0:08:26.600 The officer shot the soldier, and rumors spread that he 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:29.560 had been killed. This was one of a series of 0:08:29.600 --> 0:08:32.560 similar riots that took place in cities around the United 0:08:32.559 --> 0:08:36.000 States in nineteen forty three, and in Harlem, six black 0:08:36.040 --> 0:08:38.880 people were killed as thousands of police were dispatched in 0:08:38.960 --> 0:08:42.160 response to the violence. Baldwin really felt like living in 0:08:42.200 --> 0:08:45.160 Harlem had become untenable and he moved to Greenwich Village 0:08:45.200 --> 0:08:47.240 to try to make a living as a writer, while 0:08:47.280 --> 0:08:50.400 also waiting tables and doing other work just to try 0:08:50.440 --> 0:08:52.480 to make ends meet and to send what money he 0:08:52.520 --> 0:08:55.800 could back to his family. He had relationships with men 0:08:55.840 --> 0:08:58.160 and with women, and at one point became engaged to 0:08:58.200 --> 0:09:01.280 a woman, but ultimately broke off that engagement. He also 0:09:01.320 --> 0:09:04.240 became friends with a man named Eugene Wurse, who encouraged 0:09:04.280 --> 0:09:07.640 Baldwin to join the Young People's Socialist League, although it's 0:09:07.679 --> 0:09:11.280 not entirely clear how long Baldwin was involved or exactly 0:09:11.320 --> 0:09:14.880 what his involvement even was. In the years just after 0:09:14.920 --> 0:09:17.200 World War Two, he spent at least some time with 0:09:17.320 --> 0:09:21.679 various political groups that were connected to things like socialism, communism, 0:09:21.720 --> 0:09:25.040 and labor rights, but he didn't become exclusively focused on 0:09:25.200 --> 0:09:28.160 any of them, or in some cases ever officially become 0:09:28.200 --> 0:09:31.320 a member. Yeah One of the biographies that I read 0:09:31.320 --> 0:09:34.080 of him characterize this period as kind of bouncing around 0:09:34.200 --> 0:09:36.720 from one group to another, getting a sense of what 0:09:36.760 --> 0:09:39.600 different ideas were, but not really committing to any of 0:09:39.640 --> 0:09:43.440 them at that point. In nineteen forty four, Baldwin met 0:09:43.559 --> 0:09:47.520 Richard Wright, who helped him get Harper's Eugene F. Saxton Fellowship, 0:09:47.600 --> 0:09:50.200 and that fellowship provided some of the funding to help 0:09:50.280 --> 0:09:53.800 him launch a literary career. He started getting published and 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:57.560 established magazines, but then in nineteen forty six, Eugene Worth 0:09:57.640 --> 0:10:00.880 died by suicide. That was something that traumatiz and haunted 0:10:00.920 --> 0:10:03.760 Baldwin for the rest of his life. Two years later, 0:10:04.040 --> 0:10:06.440 Baldwin had become certain that he could not live in 0:10:06.440 --> 0:10:09.800 the United States anymore. It circled back to what he 0:10:09.800 --> 0:10:12.800 had realized that last night in bell Mead. He had 0:10:12.840 --> 0:10:15.360 a clear minded certainty that if he didn't leave the 0:10:15.480 --> 0:10:19.040 US in its systematic racism and oppression, he would be 0:10:19.120 --> 0:10:22.560 killed or he would kill someone. He finally decided to 0:10:22.600 --> 0:10:25.440 go to France at the age of twenty four, or 0:10:25.480 --> 0:10:37.640 get to that. After a quick sponsor break, James Baldwin 0:10:37.720 --> 0:10:40.960 left for Paris on November eleventh, nineteen forty eight, using 0:10:41.000 --> 0:10:42.920 the last of the money from a fellowship to pay 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:45.880 for a one way ticket by sea. Beyond that, he 0:10:45.960 --> 0:10:49.840 had almost no money, virtually no connections, and nowhere to stay. 0:10:50.080 --> 0:10:53.680 He also did not speak French, and his words quote, 0:10:53.760 --> 0:10:56.160 I had no idea what might happen to me in 0:10:56.200 --> 0:10:58.880 France but I was very clear what would happen if 0:10:58.920 --> 0:11:03.120 I remained in New Baldwin faced some criticism for leaving 0:11:03.120 --> 0:11:05.840 the US, with people arguing that he was abandoning a 0:11:05.880 --> 0:11:08.240 country that he should have stayed in and tried to 0:11:08.280 --> 0:11:11.400 help fix, but this first stretch of time in Paris 0:11:11.480 --> 0:11:14.600 was critically important to his work and identity as a writer. 0:11:15.600 --> 0:11:17.960 Unlike many of the other writers and artists who left 0:11:17.960 --> 0:11:20.560 the US for Paris, he didn't think of himself as 0:11:20.559 --> 0:11:24.120 an expatriate, but more as a commuter. He still felt 0:11:24.160 --> 0:11:26.600 a deep connection to the United States, and he made 0:11:26.640 --> 0:11:29.800 frequent trips back, and he spent long stretches of time 0:11:29.920 --> 0:11:33.480 in other parts of the world, including Istanbul. Shortly after 0:11:33.600 --> 0:11:38.440 arriving in Paris, Baldwin met Swiss artist Lucien Happersberger, who 0:11:38.520 --> 0:11:41.160 was white, bisexual, and at one point married to a woman. 0:11:41.800 --> 0:11:45.240 When they met, Baldwin was twenty four and Happersberger was seventeen. 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:48.920 They eventually started a relationship that went on for almost 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:53.240 forty years. Baldwin described Happersberger as the love of his life, 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:57.160 and he became godfather to Happersberger's children. Along with other 0:11:57.240 --> 0:12:00.960 relationships in his life. Happersberger was one of the inspirations 0:12:00.960 --> 0:12:05.560 for Baldwin's novel Giovanni's Room. While in France, Baldwin wrote 0:12:05.720 --> 0:12:10.079 Everybody's Protest Novel, which argued that political novels like Harriet 0:12:10.080 --> 0:12:13.560 Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Richard Wright's Native Son 0:12:14.040 --> 0:12:19.160 were reinforcing stereotypes about black people and in particular, dehumanizing 0:12:19.200 --> 0:12:23.079 black men. Although Wright had helped Baldwin secure his first 0:12:23.080 --> 0:12:26.040 writing fellowship, the two men did not see eye to 0:12:26.080 --> 0:12:28.800 eye on a number of issues, and they frequently criticized 0:12:28.800 --> 0:12:32.800 one another. On December nineteenth, nineteen forty nine, Baldwin was 0:12:32.920 --> 0:12:36.600 arrested for being in receipt of stolen property after he 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:39.920 borrowed a bedsheet that a friend had stolen from a hotel. 0:12:40.720 --> 0:12:43.480 This whole experience led him to think about identity and 0:12:43.559 --> 0:12:47.080 policing in the United States versus in France. The police 0:12:47.120 --> 0:12:49.920 in France saw him as an American, while police in 0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:53.320 New York would have seen him as an inherently criminal problem. 0:12:53.920 --> 0:12:56.120 But he also became aware that most of the people 0:12:56.120 --> 0:12:58.199 who were in jail with him in Paris were from 0:12:58.280 --> 0:13:02.160 Northern Africa, and the French colonialism had its own part 0:13:02.240 --> 0:13:05.640 to play in Racism in France. This first stretch of 0:13:05.720 --> 0:13:08.640 time in France let Baldwin look back on the US 0:13:08.760 --> 0:13:12.000 from a distance, seeing things from angles that just were 0:13:12.040 --> 0:13:14.120 not possible for him while he was living in it. 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:17.439 He started coming to terms with both his own history 0:13:17.520 --> 0:13:20.960 and with his sexuality while living in France. In Switzerland, 0:13:21.000 --> 0:13:24.040 he finished his semi autobiographical novel Go Tell It on 0:13:24.080 --> 0:13:26.880 the Mountain she had actually started writing in high school, 0:13:27.200 --> 0:13:29.800 as well as a play called The Amen Corner and 0:13:30.000 --> 0:13:33.600 a series of essays. In nineteen fifty two, Baldwin made 0:13:33.600 --> 0:13:35.960 a trip back to the US with financial help from 0:13:35.960 --> 0:13:39.720 Marlon Brando. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in June 0:13:39.760 --> 0:13:43.560 of nineteen fifty four, and other fellowships followed. In nineteen 0:13:43.600 --> 0:13:46.440 fifty nine, he was awarded a Ford Foundation grant to 0:13:46.480 --> 0:13:49.679 work on the novel Another Country. When This novel included 0:13:49.679 --> 0:13:53.440 a fictionalized depiction of his friendship with Eugene Wirth, including 0:13:53.440 --> 0:13:58.079 Worth's suicide. Professor and literary critic Fred Stanley later wrote 0:13:58.080 --> 0:14:02.200 of Another Country quote, Baldwin has been audacious enough prior 0:14:02.240 --> 0:14:06.040 to most other artists to grapple candidly with the usually 0:14:06.120 --> 0:14:11.160 taboosed subjects of American society and culture, interracial sexual intercourse, 0:14:11.520 --> 0:14:15.959 homosexuality as a normative mode of experience, and bisexuality as 0:14:16.000 --> 0:14:19.920 a real phenomenon. After similar back and forth travel, Baldwin 0:14:20.000 --> 0:14:22.400 returned to the US for a longer stretch, starting in 0:14:22.480 --> 0:14:25.920 July of nineteen fifty seven. A lot of his written 0:14:25.920 --> 0:14:28.720 work during this time documents or reflects on the Civil 0:14:28.840 --> 0:14:32.120 Rights movement, a movement that he wasn't really sure how 0:14:32.200 --> 0:14:35.160 he fit into. He had become well known and well 0:14:35.280 --> 0:14:37.600 established as a writer by this point, and while he 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:41.040 did not want to describe himself as the movement's spokesperson, 0:14:41.560 --> 0:14:44.000 there were definitely people who thought of him that way. 0:14:44.680 --> 0:14:48.000 As the Civil rights movement grew and evolved, Baldwin found 0:14:48.080 --> 0:14:51.240 himself aligned in some ways with Martin Luther King Junior's 0:14:51.320 --> 0:14:55.280 approach through nonviolent action, and in other ways with Malcolm X, 0:14:55.320 --> 0:14:58.600 the Nation of Islam, and the Black Power movement. For example, 0:14:58.680 --> 0:15:02.280 as time went on, Baldwren increasingly favored the Black Power 0:15:02.320 --> 0:15:06.280 movement's focus on immediate radical change instead of non violent 0:15:06.440 --> 0:15:10.200 incremental progress, But he really did not agree with the 0:15:10.240 --> 0:15:14.360 Black power movement's focus on black separatism. One hallmark of 0:15:14.400 --> 0:15:17.160 Baldwin's writing during the Civil rights movement was that it 0:15:17.200 --> 0:15:21.920 was accessible to and sometimes written specifically for a white audience. 0:15:22.800 --> 0:15:25.720 Much of this written work carried an implicit or explicit 0:15:25.760 --> 0:15:29.160 warning that racism was not just harming black people, that 0:15:29.240 --> 0:15:32.560 it was also destroying white people as well. Some of 0:15:32.600 --> 0:15:36.160 it has also been described as prophetic, foreseeing that the 0:15:36.160 --> 0:15:39.680 movement would become more militant if nonviolent activism did not 0:15:39.800 --> 0:15:43.680 meet its goals, and foreseeing that white activism would turn 0:15:43.720 --> 0:15:47.360 away from that militancy. Baldwin's work in the movement was 0:15:47.400 --> 0:15:50.880 not just about writing, though he also made speeches. He 0:15:51.160 --> 0:15:56.280 donated money, wrote letters, sim petitions organized during the lunch 0:15:56.320 --> 0:15:58.280 counter sit ins that we talked about on the show. 0:15:58.360 --> 0:16:01.720 Earlier this year, James Baldwin traveled to Tallahassee to interview 0:16:01.760 --> 0:16:05.440 student demonstrators. In nineteen sixty one, he became a sponsor 0:16:05.480 --> 0:16:08.240 for the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, and 0:16:08.320 --> 0:16:11.280 he also helped sponsor a rally to disband the House 0:16:11.360 --> 0:16:15.120 on American Activities Committee. In nineteen sixty three, he took 0:16:15.160 --> 0:16:17.760 a speaking tour through the South in conjunction with the 0:16:17.760 --> 0:16:21.360 Congress of Racial Equality. During this tour, he met and 0:16:21.400 --> 0:16:25.280 started working with civil rights activists and NAACP Field secretary 0:16:25.360 --> 0:16:29.040 Medgar Evers. Baldwin's book The Fire Next Time came out 0:16:29.120 --> 0:16:32.600 during this tour as well. It contains two essays, My 0:16:32.720 --> 0:16:35.560 Dungeon Shook Letter to my Nephew on the one hundredth 0:16:35.560 --> 0:16:39.720 anniversary of the Emancipation and Down at the Cross Letter 0:16:39.800 --> 0:16:43.160 from a Region of My Mind. The latter essay dwells 0:16:43.160 --> 0:16:47.000 on Baldwin's experiences with religion, including both Christianity and the 0:16:47.080 --> 0:16:50.640 Nation of Islam, relating them to race and racism, and 0:16:50.680 --> 0:16:54.160 reflecting on his own beliefs. The Fire Next Time spent 0:16:54.200 --> 0:16:56.400 more than forty weeks in the top five of the 0:16:56.440 --> 0:17:00.760 New York Times bestseller list. On May seventeenth, nineteen sixty three, 0:17:00.960 --> 0:17:04.919 during Martin Luther King Junior's Birmingham campaign, Baldwin was on 0:17:04.960 --> 0:17:07.760 the cover of Time magazine under a banner that read 0:17:07.880 --> 0:17:11.960 Birmingham and Beyond the Negro Push for Equality. A few 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:15.600 days before that Time magazine cover, Baldwin had sent a 0:17:15.640 --> 0:17:20.280 telegram to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy criticizing the United 0:17:20.280 --> 0:17:23.600 States lack of response to the civil rights movement, especially 0:17:23.640 --> 0:17:27.159 in the face of increasing violence and brutality against the 0:17:27.160 --> 0:17:31.160 people who were participating in that movement. Baldwin framed this 0:17:31.280 --> 0:17:34.080 inaction and the failure of the nation to make black 0:17:34.119 --> 0:17:38.280 liberation a priority, as a moral treason. The result was 0:17:38.280 --> 0:17:41.320 that Kennedy met with Baldwin for breakfast on May twenty third, 0:17:41.880 --> 0:17:45.080 asking him to gather writers and activists to meet with him. 0:17:45.119 --> 0:17:48.440 The next day, they met in Kennedy's apartment in New York, 0:17:48.520 --> 0:17:51.840 where Kennedy was joined by Department of Justice lawyer Burke Marshall. 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:55.840 Baldwin had brought his brother David, as well as Harry Belafonte, 0:17:56.240 --> 0:18:00.000 Lorraine Hansbury, Lena Horn, and Rip Torn, along with REPAT 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:04.399 representatives from the Chicago Urban League, Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited, 0:18:04.600 --> 0:18:09.080 the NAACP, and core Clarence Benjamin Jones, who was one 0:18:09.080 --> 0:18:12.560 of Martin Luther King Junior's advisors, was also there. But 0:18:12.720 --> 0:18:15.119 Kennedy's goal for this meeting was not so much to 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:17.800 get a sense of what Black Americans needed, or what 0:18:17.840 --> 0:18:20.560 the civil rights movement's goals were, or how the government 0:18:20.640 --> 0:18:24.240 might incorporate those goals. He was more focused on figuring 0:18:24.320 --> 0:18:26.480 out who among them might serve as sort of a 0:18:26.520 --> 0:18:29.720 mouthpiece for the government, promoting the government's policies to the 0:18:29.720 --> 0:18:35.200 black community to improve race relations, and also on outlining 0:18:35.240 --> 0:18:37.480 what the government had done already so far to the 0:18:37.480 --> 0:18:42.879 assembled group while basically asking for their patients. This meeting 0:18:42.960 --> 0:18:46.720 consequently did not go well. Baldwin and the other assembled 0:18:46.760 --> 0:18:50.360 activists were trying to describe the systemic racism that went 0:18:50.440 --> 0:18:53.600 well beyond what was encoded in law, while Kennedy was 0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:56.399 talking about how his own family had been oppressed for 0:18:56.520 --> 0:19:00.840 being Irish. Kennedy came off as deeply naive and unwilling 0:19:00.880 --> 0:19:07.080 to listen. Eventually, Lorraine Hansbury walked out and several others followed. Afterward, 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:11.119 the FBI started monitoring Baldwin, placing him on its security 0:19:11.119 --> 0:19:14.720 Index of potentially dangerous people and amassing a file on 0:19:14.800 --> 0:19:18.680 him that was more than seventeen hundred pages long. This meeting, 0:19:18.760 --> 0:19:22.720 though while not immediately successful, is often credited with starting 0:19:22.760 --> 0:19:27.320 to shift Robert Kennedy's perspectives, leading him to encourage his brother, 0:19:27.680 --> 0:19:30.240 President John F. Kennedy, to address the nation on a 0:19:30.280 --> 0:19:33.880 subject of civil rights. Kennedy gave his Civil Rights Address 0:19:33.960 --> 0:19:37.040 on June eleventh, nineteen sixty three, in the early morning 0:19:37.080 --> 0:19:40.480 hours of June twelfth, Medgar Evers was assassinated in his 0:19:40.600 --> 0:19:44.640 driveway in front of his children. The culprit was Byrondella Beckwith, 0:19:44.640 --> 0:19:46.680 who was found guilty of the crime more than thirty 0:19:46.760 --> 0:19:50.240 years later. Baldwin continued his writing and work during the 0:19:50.320 --> 0:19:53.719 nineteen sixties, but the assassination of Medgar Evers was the 0:19:53.720 --> 0:19:56.440 first of a series of events that sort of shifted 0:19:56.440 --> 0:19:59.840 his work and his outlook. Others included the Sixteenth Street 0:19:59.840 --> 0:20:02.840 b Baptist Church bombing in nineteen sixty three, as well 0:20:02.880 --> 0:20:05.360 as the assassinations of two other men that he had 0:20:05.440 --> 0:20:08.560 known and worked with, Malcolm X in nineteen sixty five 0:20:08.960 --> 0:20:11.840 and Martin Luther King Junior in nineteen sixty eight. And 0:20:11.920 --> 0:20:14.159 we're going to get to more on that after we 0:20:14.280 --> 0:20:25.920 first have a sponsor break. As we noted earlier, James 0:20:26.000 --> 0:20:29.639 Baldwin never seemed really sure where he fit within the 0:20:29.680 --> 0:20:33.359 civil rights movement. Although he participated in the nineteen sixty 0:20:33.400 --> 0:20:36.560 three March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, he wasn't 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:38.880 a big part of its public presence or its planning. 0:20:39.640 --> 0:20:42.040 There's been some speculation that this was because of his 0:20:42.160 --> 0:20:45.520 sexual orientation, but as We've noted on earlier episodes of 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:48.359 the show one of the major planners of the march 0:20:48.440 --> 0:20:51.840 was Byered Rustin, who was also gay. It's more likely 0:20:52.040 --> 0:20:54.760 the Baldwin's views were becoming less and less aligned with 0:20:54.800 --> 0:20:58.680 Martin Luther King Junior's nonviolent arm of the movement. As 0:20:58.720 --> 0:21:02.720 time went on, Baldwin became increasingly radical. When the Black 0:21:02.760 --> 0:21:06.480 Panther Party was established in nineteen sixty six, Baldwin supported 0:21:06.520 --> 0:21:10.159 many of its efforts, including school breakfast and lunch programs, 0:21:10.440 --> 0:21:15.760 community healthcare programs, schools, and armed self defense programs meant 0:21:15.800 --> 0:21:19.359 to protect black communities from violence, including violence at the 0:21:19.359 --> 0:21:23.240 hands of police. Baldwin's written work had always been focused 0:21:23.240 --> 0:21:26.280 on both racism and homophobia, and he had been both 0:21:26.320 --> 0:21:30.240 critically acclaimed and a bestseller through this work, but in 0:21:30.280 --> 0:21:34.399 the late sixties and early seventies, reviewers increasingly criticized him 0:21:34.440 --> 0:21:39.119 for becoming more pessimistic, accusatory, and vehement and two directly 0:21:39.200 --> 0:21:42.600 focused on civil rights. This included the three act play 0:21:42.640 --> 0:21:45.280 Blues for Mister Charlie, which was based on the murder 0:21:45.280 --> 0:21:48.840 of Emmett's Hill. And it wasn't just white literary reviewers 0:21:48.880 --> 0:21:53.000 who were criticizing his work. His advocacy for Palestinian liberation 0:21:53.520 --> 0:21:57.119 was criticized as anti semitic, although he also criticized anti 0:21:57.119 --> 0:22:01.879 semitism within black activism. Members of the Black Arts movement 0:22:01.920 --> 0:22:04.920 criticized his work because it was intended, at least in part, 0:22:04.960 --> 0:22:08.480 for white audiences, rather than being written for other black people. 0:22:09.400 --> 0:22:12.320 The non violent arm of the Civil rights movement criticized 0:22:12.320 --> 0:22:15.840 his more radical and confrontational views, while the Black Power 0:22:15.880 --> 0:22:21.159 movement criticized his sexual orientation and his integrationist stances. His 0:22:21.200 --> 0:22:25.439 sexual orientation was also criticized from outside the movement. The 0:22:25.520 --> 0:22:30.000 Kennedys nicknamed him Martin Luther Queen. He basically was criticized 0:22:30.040 --> 0:22:35.240 from every conceivable direction. In nineteen seventy, Baldwin returned to France, 0:22:35.280 --> 0:22:37.679 where he bought a farmhouse in the medieval village of 0:22:37.760 --> 0:22:40.239 Saint Paul de Vance. Although he's still did a lot 0:22:40.240 --> 0:22:42.840 of traveling, thus became his permanent home for the rest 0:22:42.840 --> 0:22:47.399 of his life. Locals named it Shay Baldwin. Baldwin's writing 0:22:47.480 --> 0:22:51.560 in political views had always been anti capitalist, anti colonial, 0:22:51.920 --> 0:22:58.560 anti imperialist, anti racist, anti homophobic, Pan African, pro Palestinian liberation, 0:22:58.920 --> 0:23:03.600 and against mass incarceration. He also made connections between black 0:23:03.640 --> 0:23:07.600 liberation in the US and United States foreign policy, noting 0:23:07.600 --> 0:23:10.399 that a nation that truly supported black liberation would be 0:23:10.480 --> 0:23:14.120 supporting black freedom fighters elsewhere in the world and supporting 0:23:14.119 --> 0:23:17.879 people who were fighting for independence from colonial powers. All 0:23:17.920 --> 0:23:21.399 this work had also been primarily focused on men in 0:23:21.440 --> 0:23:24.439 the nineteen seventies and eighties. That started to change, in 0:23:24.480 --> 0:23:28.720 part through televised conversations with poets Nikki Giovanni and past 0:23:28.760 --> 0:23:33.280 podcast subject Audrey Lord. Both women really pushed Baldwin on 0:23:33.359 --> 0:23:37.680 issues of gender, gender roles, and sexuality, ultimately leading him 0:23:37.680 --> 0:23:41.280 to criticize the whiteness of the mainstream feminist movement, as 0:23:41.320 --> 0:23:46.600