WEBVTT - James Baldwin 0:00:01.280 --> 0:00:04.320 Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:13.840 of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:13.960 --> 0:00:17.440 I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. The last 0:00:17.440 --> 0:00:20.040 thing we recorded before I got to work on today's 0:00:20.079 --> 0:00:22.520 episode was our June five behind the scenes, and if 0:00:22.560 --> 0:00:25.520 you've listened to that, I was clearly having a hard 0:00:25.520 --> 0:00:29.600 time figuring out what to do next. And when I 0:00:29.640 --> 0:00:32.080 remembered that I'd had James Baldwin on my list for 0:00:32.120 --> 0:00:37.120 a while, my inward response was like, yes, obviously, James Baldwin. 0:00:37.320 --> 0:00:40.320 Of course, why didn't you even think of this before? 0:00:41.600 --> 0:00:44.959 This description by Juan Williams and a piece called Baldwin 0:00:45.000 --> 0:00:48.240 The Witnesses Testament, which was published in The Washington Post 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:52.960 the day after Baldwin's death in illustrates why I had 0:00:53.000 --> 0:00:57.560 that response quote. Given the messy nature of racial hatred, 0:00:57.800 --> 0:01:00.880 of the half truths, blasphemies and lies that make up 0:01:00.920 --> 0:01:05.039 American life, Baldwin's accuracy and reproducing that world stands as 0:01:05.080 --> 0:01:09.279 a remarkable achievement. His accuracy was key and his works 0:01:09.360 --> 0:01:11.560 the reader could resonate to the sounds of the street 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:14.840 corner as drawn by Baldwin, could feel the anger of 0:01:14.880 --> 0:01:18.520 black Americans so long denied a role in American life. 0:01:18.560 --> 0:01:22.280 As Baldwin wrote about that anger, black people reading Baldwin 0:01:22.520 --> 0:01:26.520 knew he wrote the truth. White people reading Baldwin sensed 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:29.080 his truth about the lives of black people and the 0:01:29.120 --> 0:01:33.760 sins of a racist nation. Interest in James Baldwin's work 0:01:33.800 --> 0:01:36.560 has just really grown in the United States over the 0:01:36.600 --> 0:01:39.960 last several years, in conjunction with the Black Lives Matter movement. 0:01:40.680 --> 0:01:43.840 His nineteen sixty three book The Fire Next Time is 0:01:43.920 --> 0:01:47.640 frequently on anti racism reading lists. Sometimes it's paired up 0:01:47.680 --> 0:01:50.080 with Tana hassy Coats Between the World and Me, which 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:53.360 was inspired by it, or with The Fire This Time 0:01:53.440 --> 0:01:56.000 a New Generation Speaks about Race. That's a book that 0:01:56.040 --> 0:02:00.960 came out in Basically, James Baldwin was a brilliant essayist 0:02:01.280 --> 0:02:03.520 and one of the chroniclers of the civil rights movement 0:02:03.600 --> 0:02:06.720 and a really powerful voice against racism. And that is 0:02:06.720 --> 0:02:09.040 why we are talking about him today. So we're gonna 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:12.760 start with his background. James Baldwin was born James Arthur 0:02:12.840 --> 0:02:17.440 Jones in Harlem, New York, on August two. His mother 0:02:17.600 --> 0:02:20.280 was Emma Bertas Jones, and she was a domestic worker 0:02:20.880 --> 0:02:23.280 When James was born, Emma was not married and she 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:27.000 never told him who his biological father was. When James 0:02:27.080 --> 0:02:29.800 was three, his mother married David Baldwin, who was a 0:02:29.800 --> 0:02:33.240 factory worker and an evangelical minister, and they went on 0:02:33.320 --> 0:02:36.920 to have eight children together. The family was really poor. 0:02:37.000 --> 0:02:39.320 They were living in a part of Harlem that Baldwin 0:02:39.440 --> 0:02:43.360 later called Junkie's Hollow, and part of James's early years 0:02:43.360 --> 0:02:49.840 also took place during the Great Depression. David Baldwin was strict, unyielding, authoritarian, 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:53.520 and cruel, including telling James that he was ugly and 0:02:53.600 --> 0:02:56.880 reminding him of the circumstances of his birth, and of 0:02:56.880 --> 0:03:00.080 course that was heavily stigmatized at the time. At as 0:03:00.080 --> 0:03:03.560 an adult, Baldwin described as a whole household constantly working 0:03:03.560 --> 0:03:07.200 to appease his stepfather. James also said David taught him 0:03:07.200 --> 0:03:11.160 to fight because he had to continually fight back with patients, 0:03:11.320 --> 0:03:14.360 and a kind of ruthless determination, because I had to 0:03:14.520 --> 0:03:17.880 endure it, to go under and come back up to wait. 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:21.960 James Baldwin attributed his stepfather's treatment of him and his 0:03:22.080 --> 0:03:24.800 mother and siblings as being the product of living as 0:03:24.800 --> 0:03:28.200 a proud man in a racist society where he just 0:03:28.360 --> 0:03:31.360 could not make enough money to really support his family. 0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:35.320 And Baldwin also credited his younger siblings as being a 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:37.720 big part of what kept him off the streets and 0:03:37.840 --> 0:03:41.160 largely out of trouble in his youth. As the oldest, 0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:44.160 James was always helping to look after the younger ones, 0:03:44.240 --> 0:03:46.480 and that was something he described doing with a book 0:03:46.520 --> 0:03:50.120 in one hand, because reading became one of his biggest 0:03:50.200 --> 0:03:53.160 means of escape. He liked to tell people that he 0:03:53.240 --> 0:03:56.480 read every volume in Harlem's library branches and that he 0:03:56.520 --> 0:03:58.640 had to go to the New York Public Library on 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:01.480 Fort Street to find any books that he hadn't read yet. 0:04:01.680 --> 0:04:04.560 He also credited religion with helping to keep him out 0:04:04.600 --> 0:04:07.960 of trouble. He had a religious conversion experience at the 0:04:08.000 --> 0:04:11.080 age of fourteen and became a youth minister at Fireside 0:04:11.120 --> 0:04:15.080 Pentecostal Assembly. He was a youth minister for three years, 0:04:15.200 --> 0:04:18.160 and during that time he crafted his use of language 0:04:18.279 --> 0:04:21.960 and his speaking style. Throughout all this, James had been 0:04:22.000 --> 0:04:25.480 attending New York Public schools, first at PS twenty four, 0:04:25.800 --> 0:04:28.680 whose principle was Gertrude Ayres. That was the first black 0:04:28.720 --> 0:04:31.800 principle in New York City. From there, he moved to 0:04:31.839 --> 0:04:35.440 Frederick Douglas Junior High School, where Harlem Renaissance poet County 0:04:35.480 --> 0:04:38.040 Cullen was his French teacher and the director of the 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:42.279 school's literary club. While at Frederick Douglas Junior High, James 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:45.200 was editor of the school's newspaper, The Douglas Pilot, and 0:04:45.240 --> 0:04:47.360 also tried to make money to help the family buy 0:04:47.440 --> 0:04:51.440 shining shoes and selling shopping bags. For high school, James 0:04:51.480 --> 0:04:54.680 was selected to attend DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. 0:04:55.320 --> 0:04:57.599 This was one of New York's more elite schools, with 0:04:57.680 --> 0:05:01.919 a predominantly Jewish student body. There, James again worked on 0:05:01.920 --> 0:05:05.000 the school newspaper, The Magpie, and he excelled in his 0:05:05.040 --> 0:05:09.080 English and history courses. He also meant painter view for Delaney, 0:05:09.120 --> 0:05:11.680 who became a friend and something of a mentor, as 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:14.520 he demonstrated for Baldwin that a black man could become 0:05:14.600 --> 0:05:17.880 an artist. James didn't do nearly as well and as 0:05:17.880 --> 0:05:20.599 other courses as he did in English and history, and 0:05:20.600 --> 0:05:24.479 his high school years were personally very turbulent. In addition 0:05:24.520 --> 0:05:26.520 to all the stresses of his home life, he had 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:30.560 started to question his sexuality. He had also started questioning 0:05:30.560 --> 0:05:33.320 the church as he began to learn about the ways 0:05:33.400 --> 0:05:37.160 that Christianity had been used as a weapon during slavery, 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:39.839 and as he heard people within his church and his 0:05:39.880 --> 0:05:43.960 stepfather make anti Semitic comments. He ultimately left the church 0:05:44.080 --> 0:05:47.720 in ninety one. James Baldwin graduated from high school in 0:05:47.800 --> 0:05:51.160 nineteen two, six months after the rest of his class. 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:55.080 The internal turmoil connected to his faith in his sexuality 0:05:55.480 --> 0:05:58.760 contributed to a mental health crisis that derailed his studies. 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:01.279 He had hoped to go to the City College of 0:06:01.279 --> 0:06:04.520 New York, but he couldn't afford a tuition. Instead, he 0:06:04.560 --> 0:06:07.600 got a defense industry job in bell Mead, New Jersey, 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:11.520 to try to help support his family financially. By this point, 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:14.840 James's stepfather was struggling with his own mental health, with 0:06:14.960 --> 0:06:19.320 symptoms that included depression and paranoia. Baldwin's job in bell 0:06:19.400 --> 0:06:23.159 Mead involved building a new Army quartermaster depot, and it 0:06:23.240 --> 0:06:27.760 was Baldwin's first real experience with overt racism on the job. 0:06:28.200 --> 0:06:31.520 The U. S Army was still segregated, and Baldwin continued 0:06:31.560 --> 0:06:33.800 to act the way he had acted back in Harlem 0:06:33.839 --> 0:06:37.240 when he was around white Southern service members, and they, 0:06:37.240 --> 0:06:40.279 of course expected him to be totally deferential to them 0:06:40.279 --> 0:06:43.120 and to stay out of their way. Of course, racism 0:06:43.200 --> 0:06:45.840 had existed in Harlem as well, but this was a 0:06:45.880 --> 0:06:51.120 whole different set of social expectations and consequences. Baldwin described 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:53.880 this experience as learning what it meant to be a Negro. 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:57.159 He refused to back down in the face of racism 0:06:57.200 --> 0:07:00.520 and harassment on the job, and he was fired. A 0:07:00.520 --> 0:07:02.680 friend helped him get his job back, and when the 0:07:02.680 --> 0:07:06.479 harassment resumed, he again pushed back against it and was 0:07:06.560 --> 0:07:09.720 once again fired. On his last night in Belle Meade, 0:07:09.840 --> 0:07:12.760 Baldwin and some friends were refused service as a diner 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:16.239 because of their race, and Baldwin really reached a breaking point. 0:07:16.400 --> 0:07:19.280 He threw a water picture and that shattered the mirror 0:07:19.280 --> 0:07:24.640 behind the bar. He described this moment as revelatory, realizing 0:07:24.640 --> 0:07:27.120 that he had been angry enough to kill someone and 0:07:27.160 --> 0:07:29.720 that his own life was in danger, and his words 0:07:29.840 --> 0:07:32.560 quote from the hatred I carried in my own heart. 0:07:33.120 --> 0:07:38.280 David Baldwin Sr. Died on July three, which was also 0:07:38.320 --> 0:07:42.400 the day James's youngest sibling, Paul Maria, was born. Two 0:07:42.480 --> 0:07:46.480 days later on August one, and uprising swept through Harlem. 0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:49.200 It was sparked when a black soldier tried to intervene 0:07:49.240 --> 0:07:51.600 as a white police officer was trying to arrest a 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:55.560 black woman. The officer shot the soldier, and rumors spread 0:07:55.600 --> 0:07:58.160 that he had been killed. This was one of a 0:07:58.200 --> 0:08:01.240 series of similar riots that took place in cities around 0:08:01.240 --> 0:08:04.920 the United States in ninety three, and in Harlem, six 0:08:04.960 --> 0:08:07.960 black people were killed as thousands of police were dispatched 0:08:08.000 --> 0:08:11.240 in response to the violence. Baldwin really felt like living 0:08:11.240 --> 0:08:13.880 in Harlem had become untenable, and he moved to Greenwich 0:08:14.040 --> 0:08:16.080 Village to try to make a living as a writer, 0:08:16.200 --> 0:08:19.360 while also waiting tables and doing other work just to 0:08:19.400 --> 0:08:21.560 try to make ends meet and to send what money 0:08:21.600 --> 0:08:24.760 he could back to his family. He had relationships with 0:08:24.800 --> 0:08:27.240 men and with women, and at one point became engaged 0:08:27.280 --> 0:08:30.160 to a woman, but ultimately broke off that engagement. He 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:32.840 also became friends with a man named Eugene Worse, who 0:08:33.000 --> 0:08:36.679 encouraged Baldwin to join the Young People's Socialist League. Although 0:08:36.679 --> 0:08:39.920 it's not entirely clear how long Baldwin was involved or 0:08:39.960 --> 0:08:43.720 exactly what his involvement even was in the years just 0:08:43.840 --> 0:08:46.199 after World War Two, he spent at least some time 0:08:46.280 --> 0:08:50.880 with various political groups that were connected to things like socialism, communism, 0:08:50.920 --> 0:08:54.320 and labor rights, but he didn't become exclusively focused on 0:08:54.360 --> 0:08:57.360 any of them, or in some cases ever officially become 0:08:57.400 --> 0:09:00.520 a member. One of the biography US that I read 0:09:00.520 --> 0:09:03.280 of him characterized this period is kind of bouncing around 0:09:03.400 --> 0:09:05.920 from one group to another, getting a sense of what 0:09:05.960 --> 0:09:08.960 different ideas were, but not really committing to any of them. 0:09:09.280 --> 0:09:14.040 At that point in Baldwin met Richard Wright, who helped 0:09:14.120 --> 0:09:17.679 him get Harper's Eugene F. Saxton Fellowship, and that fellowship 0:09:17.720 --> 0:09:20.160 provided some of the funding to help him launch a 0:09:20.240 --> 0:09:24.800 literary career. He started getting published and established magazines, but 0:09:24.840 --> 0:09:28.080 then in ninety six, Eugene Worth died by suicide. That 0:09:28.160 --> 0:09:31.040 was something that traumatized and haunted Baldwin for the rest 0:09:31.040 --> 0:09:34.640 of his life. Two years later, Baldwin had become certain 0:09:34.720 --> 0:09:36.920 that he could not live in the United States anymore. 0:09:37.679 --> 0:09:40.120 It circled back to what he had realized that last 0:09:40.240 --> 0:09:43.480 night in Belle Meade. He had a clear minded certainty 0:09:43.520 --> 0:09:46.040 that if he didn't leave the US and its systematic 0:09:46.120 --> 0:09:49.080 racism and oppression, he would be killed, or he would 0:09:49.160 --> 0:09:52.720 kill someone. He finally decided to go to France at 0:09:52.720 --> 0:09:55.600 the age of twenty four. We'll get to that. After 0:09:55.679 --> 0:10:06.400 a quick sponsor break, James Baldwin left for Paris on 0:10:06.520 --> 0:10:09.840 November eleventh, using the last of the money from a 0:10:09.840 --> 0:10:12.839 fellowship to pay for a one way ticket by sea. 0:10:13.040 --> 0:10:16.480 Beyond that, he had almost no money, virtually no connections, 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:19.400 and nowhere to stay. He also did not speak French. 0:10:20.160 --> 0:10:23.120 In his words quote, I had no idea what might 0:10:23.160 --> 0:10:25.680 happen to me in France, but I was very clear 0:10:25.720 --> 0:10:29.040 what would happen if I remained in New York. Baldwin 0:10:29.160 --> 0:10:32.480 faced some criticism for leaving the US, with people arguing 0:10:32.520 --> 0:10:34.880 that he was abandoning a country that he should have 0:10:34.920 --> 0:10:37.960 stayed in and tried to help fix. But this first 0:10:38.000 --> 0:10:40.640 stretch of time in Paris was critically important to his 0:10:40.720 --> 0:10:44.040 work and identity as a writer. Unlike many of the 0:10:44.080 --> 0:10:46.680 other writers and artists who left the US for Paris, 0:10:47.080 --> 0:10:49.719 he didn't think of himself as an expatriate, but more 0:10:49.760 --> 0:10:52.880 as a commuter. He still felt a deep connection to 0:10:52.960 --> 0:10:55.960 the United States, and he made frequent trips back, and 0:10:56.000 --> 0:10:58.400 he spent long stretches of time in other parts of 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:03.120 the world, including Istanbul. Shortly after arriving in Paris, Baldwin 0:11:03.200 --> 0:11:07.559 met Swiss artist Lucien Happersburger, who was white, bisexual, and 0:11:07.600 --> 0:11:10.120 at one point married to a woman. When they met, 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:14.240 Baldwin was twenty four and Happersburger was seventeen. They eventually 0:11:14.240 --> 0:11:17.560 started a relationship that went on for almost forty years. 0:11:18.160 --> 0:11:21.120 Baldwin described Happersburger as the love of his life, and 0:11:21.160 --> 0:11:25.680 he became godfather to Happersburger's children. Along with other relationships 0:11:25.760 --> 0:11:28.800 in his life, Happersburger was one of the inspirations for 0:11:28.880 --> 0:11:34.080 Baldwin's novel Giovanni's Room. While in France, Baldwin wrote Everybody's 0:11:34.120 --> 0:11:38.120 Protest novel, which argued that political novels like Harriet Beecher 0:11:38.160 --> 0:11:42.000 Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Richard Wright's Native Son were 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:47.480 reinforcing stereotypes about black people and in particular, dehumanizing black men. 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:51.719 Although Wright had helped Baldwin secure his first writing fellowship, 0:11:52.080 --> 0:11:54.120 the two men did not see eye to eye on 0:11:54.160 --> 0:11:57.080 a number of issues, and they frequently criticized one another. 0:11:57.520 --> 0:12:02.280 On December nineteenth, Aldwin was arrested for being in receipt 0:12:02.320 --> 0:12:05.920 of stolen property after he borrowed a bed sheet that 0:12:05.960 --> 0:12:09.479 a friend had stolen from a hotel. This whole experience 0:12:09.520 --> 0:12:12.120 led him to think about identity and policing in the 0:12:12.200 --> 0:12:15.640 United States versus in France. The police in France saw 0:12:15.720 --> 0:12:18.400 him as an American, while police in New York would 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:21.880 have seen him as an inherently criminal problem. But he 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:24.199 also became aware that most of the people who were 0:12:24.240 --> 0:12:27.440 in jail with him in Paris were from Northern Africa, 0:12:27.520 --> 0:12:30.400 and that French colonialism had its own part to play 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:34.000 in racism in France. This first stretch of time in 0:12:34.040 --> 0:12:37.320 France let Baldwin look back on the US from a distance, 0:12:37.800 --> 0:12:40.520 seeing things from angles that just were not possible for 0:12:40.600 --> 0:12:43.320 him while he was living in it. He started coming 0:12:43.320 --> 0:12:45.720 to terms with both his own history and with his 0:12:45.760 --> 0:12:49.360 sexuality while living in France. In Switzerland, he finished his 0:12:49.440 --> 0:12:52.800 semi autobiographical novel Go Tell It on the Mountain she 0:12:52.840 --> 0:12:55.440 had actually started writing in high school, as well as 0:12:55.480 --> 0:12:58.400 a plague called the Amen Corner, and a series of 0:12:58.520 --> 0:13:01.680 essays in nine In fifty two, Baldwin made a trip 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:04.920 back to the US with financial help from Marlon Brando. 0:13:05.080 --> 0:13:07.960 He was awarded a Googgenheim Fellowship in June of nineteen 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:11.960 fifty four, and other fellowships followed. In nineteen fifty nine, 0:13:12.040 --> 0:13:14.520 he was awarded a Ford Foundation grant to work on 0:13:14.559 --> 0:13:18.199 the novel Another Country, when this novel included a fictionalized 0:13:18.240 --> 0:13:22.160 depiction of his friendship with Eugene Worth, including worth suicide. 0:13:22.760 --> 0:13:26.200 Professor in literary critic Fred Stanley later wrote of Another 0:13:26.280 --> 0:13:30.400 Country quote, Baldwin has been audacious enough, prior to most 0:13:30.480 --> 0:13:34.920 other artists to grapple candidly with the usually taboo subjects 0:13:34.960 --> 0:13:40.439 of American society and culture, interracial sexual intercourse, homosexuality as 0:13:40.440 --> 0:13:44.880 a normative mode of experience, and bisexuality as a real phenomenon. 0:13:45.320 --> 0:13:48.320 After similar back and forth travel, Baldwin returned to the 0:13:48.400 --> 0:13:51.040 US for a longer stretch, starting in July of nineteen 0:13:51.080 --> 0:13:54.200 fifty seven. A lot of his written work during this 0:13:54.280 --> 0:13:57.840 time documents or reflects on the Civil Rights movement, a 0:13:57.880 --> 0:14:00.959 movement that he wasn't really sure how he fit into. 0:14:01.360 --> 0:14:03.720 He had become well known and well established as a 0:14:03.760 --> 0:14:06.000 writer by this point, and while he did not want 0:14:06.040 --> 0:14:10.360 to describe himself as the movement spokesperson, there were definitely 0:14:10.400 --> 0:14:13.000 people who thought of him that way. As the civil 0:14:13.120 --> 0:14:16.840 rights movement grew and evolved, Baldwin found himself aligned in 0:14:16.920 --> 0:14:20.000 some ways with Martin Luther King Jr's approach through non 0:14:20.120 --> 0:14:23.120 violent action, that in other ways with Malcolm X, the 0:14:23.160 --> 0:14:26.400 Nation of Islam, and the Black Power movement, for example, 0:14:26.440 --> 0:14:30.040 As time went on, Baldwin increasingly favored the Black Power 0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:34.000 movement's focus on immediate radical change instead of non violent 0:14:34.160 --> 0:14:37.960 incremental progress, but he really did not agree with the 0:14:37.960 --> 0:14:42.080 Black Power movements focus on black separatism. One hallmark of 0:14:42.120 --> 0:14:44.920 Baldwin's writing during the Civil rights movement was that it 0:14:44.960 --> 0:14:49.680 was accessible to and sometimes written specifically for a white audience. 0:14:50.560 --> 0:14:53.480 Much of this written work carried an implicit or explicit 0:14:53.520 --> 0:14:56.880 warning that racism was not just harming black people, that 0:14:57.000 --> 0:15:00.320 it was also destroying white people as well. Some of 0:15:00.360 --> 0:15:03.880 it has also been described as prophetic, foreseeing that the 0:15:03.920 --> 0:15:07.320 movement would become more militant if non violent activism did 0:15:07.360 --> 0:15:11.160 not meet its goals, and foreseeing that white activism would 0:15:11.200 --> 0:15:14.920 turn away from that militancy. Baldwin's work in the movement 0:15:15.000 --> 0:15:18.320 was not just about writing, though he also made speeches, 0:15:18.560 --> 0:15:23.720 He donated money, wrote letters sci petitions organized during the 0:15:23.800 --> 0:15:26.040 lunch counter sit ins that we talked about on the show. 0:15:26.080 --> 0:15:29.480 Earlier this year, James Baldwin traveled to Tallahassee to interview 0:15:29.520 --> 0:15:33.120 student demonstrators. In nineteen sixty one, he became a sponsor 0:15:33.200 --> 0:15:36.040 for the National Committee for a Saying Nuclear Policy, and 0:15:36.080 --> 0:15:39.040 he also helped sponsor a rally to disband the House 0:15:39.080 --> 0:15:42.880 An American Activities Committee. In nineteen sixty three, he took 0:15:42.880 --> 0:15:45.480 a speaking tour through the South in conjunction with the 0:15:45.520 --> 0:15:49.080 Congress of Racial Equality. During this tour, he met and 0:15:49.120 --> 0:15:51.680 started working with civil rights activists and in double a 0:15:51.760 --> 0:15:56.040 cp field secretary Medgar Evers. Baldwin's book The Fire Next 0:15:56.080 --> 0:15:58.960 Time came out during this tour as well. It contains 0:15:59.000 --> 0:16:02.600 two essays, My Dungeon Shook Letter to my Nephew on 0:16:02.640 --> 0:16:06.520 the one anniversary of the Emancipation and Down at the 0:16:06.560 --> 0:16:10.200 Cross Letter from a Region of My Mind. The latter 0:16:10.320 --> 0:16:14.520 essay dwells on Baldwin's experiences with religion, including both Christianity 0:16:14.600 --> 0:16:18.239 and the Nation of Islam, relating them to race and racism, 0:16:18.280 --> 0:16:21.600 and reflecting on his own beliefs. The Fire Next Time 0:16:21.680 --> 0:16:24.040 spent more than forty weeks in the top five of 0:16:24.040 --> 0:16:27.760 the New York Times bestseller List on May seventeenth, nineteen 0:16:27.840 --> 0:16:32.400 sixty three, during Martin Luther King Jr's Birmingham campaign, Baldwin 0:16:32.480 --> 0:16:35.120 was on the cover of Time magazine under a banner 0:16:35.120 --> 0:16:39.160 that read Birmingham and Beyond the Negro Pushed for Equality. 0:16:39.440 --> 0:16:42.960 A few days before that Time magazine cover, Baldwin had 0:16:42.960 --> 0:16:47.480 sent a telegram to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy criticizing 0:16:47.520 --> 0:16:50.600 the United States lack of response to the civil rights movement, 0:16:50.800 --> 0:16:54.760 especially in the face of increasing violence and brutality against 0:16:54.840 --> 0:16:58.760 the people who were participating in that movement. Baldwin framed 0:16:58.760 --> 0:17:01.520 this inaction in the failure of the nation to make 0:17:01.560 --> 0:17:05.560 black liberation a priority, as a moral treason. The result 0:17:05.920 --> 0:17:08.399 was that Kennedy met with Baldwin for breakfast on May, 0:17:09.600 --> 0:17:12.800 asking him to gather writers and activists to meet with him. 0:17:12.840 --> 0:17:16.200 The next day. They met in Kennedy's apartment in New York, 0:17:16.240 --> 0:17:19.560 where Kennedy was joined by Department of Justice lawyer Burke Marshall. 0:17:20.359 --> 0:17:23.560 Baldwin had brought his brother David, as well as Harry Belafonte, 0:17:24.000 --> 0:17:28.320 Lorraine Handsbury, Lena Horn, and Ripped Torn, along with representatives 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:32.479 from the Chicago Urban League, Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited, the 0:17:32.600 --> 0:17:36.560 n double A CP, and core Clarence Benjamin Jones, who 0:17:36.600 --> 0:17:39.800 is one of Martin Luther King Junior's advisers, was also there. 0:17:40.320 --> 0:17:42.760 The Kennedy's goal for this meeting was not so much 0:17:42.800 --> 0:17:45.399 to get a sense of what Black Americans needed, or 0:17:45.440 --> 0:17:47.919 what the civil rights movement's goals were or how the 0:17:47.960 --> 0:17:51.520 government might incorporate those goals. He was more focused on 0:17:51.600 --> 0:17:54.119 figuring out who among them might serve as sort of 0:17:54.160 --> 0:17:57.359 a mouthpiece for the government, promoting the government's policies to 0:17:57.400 --> 0:18:02.359 the black community to improve ray relations, and also on 0:18:02.440 --> 0:18:05.080 outlining what the government had done already so far to 0:18:05.119 --> 0:18:09.960 the assembled group while basically asking for their patients uh. 0:18:10.080 --> 0:18:13.760 This meeting consequently did not go well. Baldwin and the 0:18:13.800 --> 0:18:17.720 other assembled activists were trying to describe the systemic racism 0:18:17.760 --> 0:18:20.680 that went well beyond what was encoded in law, while 0:18:20.760 --> 0:18:23.479 Kennedy was talking about how his own family had been 0:18:23.520 --> 0:18:27.720 oppressed for being Irish. Kennedy came off as deeply naive 0:18:27.920 --> 0:18:32.320 and unwilling to listen. Eventually, Lorraine Hansbury walked out and 0:18:32.400 --> 0:18:37.680 several others followed. Afterward, the FBI started monitoring Baldwin, placing 0:18:37.760 --> 0:18:41.280 him on its Security Index of potentially dangerous people and 0:18:41.359 --> 0:18:44.000 amassing a file on him that was more than seventeen 0:18:44.119 --> 0:18:48.560 hundred pages long. This meeting, though while not immediately successful, 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:52.720 is often credited with starting to shift Robert Kennedy's perspectives, 0:18:53.280 --> 0:18:56.679 leading him to encourage his brother, President John F. Kennedy 0:18:56.760 --> 0:18:59.960 to address the nation on the subject of civil rights okay, 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:02.520 and he gave his civil rights address on June eleventh, 0:19:02.600 --> 0:19:05.919 nineteen sixty three. In the early morning hours of June twelve, 0:19:06.240 --> 0:19:09.359 Medgar Evers was assassinated in his driveway in front of 0:19:09.359 --> 0:19:12.920 his children. The culprit was Byrondella Beckwith, who was found 0:19:12.920 --> 0:19:16.160 guilty of the crime more than thirty years later. Baldwin 0:19:16.359 --> 0:19:19.080 continued his writing and worked during the nineteen sixties, but 0:19:19.119 --> 0:19:22.119 the assassination of Medgar Evers was the first of a 0:19:22.200 --> 0:19:24.639 series of events that sort of shifted his work and 0:19:24.720 --> 0:19:28.719 his outlook. Others included the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing 0:19:28.720 --> 0:19:31.760 in nineteen sixty three, as well as the assassinations of 0:19:31.840 --> 0:19:34.200 two other men that he had known and worked with, 0:19:34.520 --> 0:19:38.000 Malcolm X in nineteen sixty five and Martin Luther King Jr. 0:19:38.000 --> 0:19:40.399 In nineteen sixty eight, and we're going to get to 0:19:40.560 --> 0:19:46.560 more on that after we first have a sponsor break. 0:19:51.600 --> 0:19:55.600 As we noted earlier, James Baldwin never seemed really sure 0:19:55.720 --> 0:19:59.080 where he fit within the civil rights movement. Although he 0:19:59.160 --> 0:20:02.240 participated in the nineteen sixty three March on Washington for 0:20:02.320 --> 0:20:04.880 Jobs and Freedom, he wasn't a big part of its 0:20:04.880 --> 0:20:08.600 public presence or its planning. There's been some speculation that 0:20:08.640 --> 0:20:11.560 this was because of his sexual orientation, but as we've 0:20:11.600 --> 0:20:14.359 noted on earlier episodes of the show, one of the 0:20:14.440 --> 0:20:17.359 major planners of the march was Bayard Rustin, who was 0:20:17.400 --> 0:20:21.000 also gay. It's more likely that Baldwin's views were becoming 0:20:21.080 --> 0:20:23.800 less and less aligned with Martin Luther King Jr's non 0:20:23.920 --> 0:20:27.360 violent arm of the movement. As time went on, Baldwin 0:20:27.480 --> 0:20:31.639 became increasingly radical. When the Black Panther Party was established 0:20:31.640 --> 0:20:35.040 in nineteen sixty six, Baldwin supported many of its efforts, 0:20:35.280 --> 0:20:39.600 including school breakfast and lunch programs, community health care programs, 0:20:39.960 --> 0:20:44.040 schools and arms self defense programs meant to protect black 0:20:44.040 --> 0:20:47.640 communities from violence, including violence at the hands of police. 0:20:48.480 --> 0:20:51.680 Baldwin's written work had always been focused on both racism 0:20:51.720 --> 0:20:55.320 and homophobia, and he had been both critically acclaimed and 0:20:55.440 --> 0:20:58.120 a best seller through this work, But in the late 0:20:58.200 --> 0:21:01.960 sixties and early seventies or yours increasingly criticized him for 0:21:02.080 --> 0:21:07.200 becoming more pessimistic, accusatory, and vehement, and too directly focused 0:21:07.240 --> 0:21:10.479 on civil rights, as included the three act play Blues 0:21:10.520 --> 0:21:12.840 for Mr. Charlie, which was based on the murder of 0:21:12.880 --> 0:21:16.520 Emmett's Hill. And it wasn't just white literary reviewers who 0:21:16.520 --> 0:21:21.040 were criticizing his work. His advocacy for Palestinian liberation was 0:21:21.119 --> 0:21:25.600 criticized as anti semitic, although he also criticized anti semitism 0:21:25.600 --> 0:21:29.960 within black activism. Members of the Black Arts movement criticized 0:21:30.000 --> 0:21:32.400 his work because it was intended, at least in part, 0:21:32.440 --> 0:21:35.960 for white audiences rather than being written for other black people. 0:21:36.880 --> 0:21:39.800 The non violent arm of the civil rights movement criticized 0:21:39.840 --> 0:21:43.280 his more radical and confrontational views, while the Black Power 0:21:43.359 --> 0:21:48.600 movement criticized his sexual orientation and his integrationist stances. His 0:21:48.680 --> 0:21:52.919 sexual orientation was also criticized from outside the movement. The 0:21:53.000 --> 0:21:57.520 Kennedy's nicknamed him Martin Luther Queen. He basically was criticized 0:21:57.520 --> 0:22:02.760 from every conceivable direction. In nineteen seventy, Baldwin returned to France, 0:22:02.760 --> 0:22:05.199 where he bought a farmhouse in the medieval village of 0:22:05.200 --> 0:22:08.320 Saint Paul Devance. Although he's still did a lot of traveling, 0:22:08.440 --> 0:22:10.959 this became his permanent home for the rest of his life. 0:22:11.880 --> 0:22:15.920 Locals named it Sa Baldwin. Baldwin's writing in political Views 0:22:15.960 --> 0:22:21.840 had always been anti capitalist, anti colonial, anti imperialist, anti racist, 0:22:22.160 --> 0:22:28.399 anti homophobic, Pan African, pro Palestinian liberation, and against mass incarceration. 0:22:29.200 --> 0:22:32.280 He also made connections between black liberation in the US 0:22:32.440 --> 0:22:35.760 and United States foreign policy, noting that a nation that 0:22:35.800 --> 0:22:39.479 truly supported black liberation would be supporting black freedom fighters 0:22:39.520 --> 0:22:42.560 elsewhere in the world and supporting people who were fighting 0:22:42.560 --> 0:22:46.240 for independence from colonial powers. All this work had also 0:22:46.320 --> 0:22:50.440 been primarily focused on men. In the nineteen seventies and eighties, 0:22:50.480 --> 0:22:54.280 that started to change, in part through televised conversations with 0:22:54.320 --> 0:22:58.640 poets Nicki Giovanni and past podcast subject Audrey Lord. Both 0:22:58.680 --> 0:23:02.760 Women Really Is to Baldwin on issues of gender, gender roles, 0:23:02.760 --> 0:23:06.639 and sexuality, ultimately leading him to criticize the whiteness of 0:23:06.680 --> 0:23:10.159 the mainstream feminist movement as well as it's homophobia and 0:23:10.200 --> 0:23:14.960 anti lesbianism, but like Bayard Ruston, James Baldwin never took 0:23:14.960 --> 0:23:17.439 a leadership role within the gay rights movement as it 0:23:17.480 --> 0:23:20.880 became more public and widespread in the nineteen seventies and eighties. 0:23:21.680 --> 0:23:25.480 He also expressed some ambivalence about exactly how to describe 0:23:25.560 --> 0:23:30.200 himself in his own identity. In one five interview, he said, 0:23:30.280 --> 0:23:36.359 quote those terms homosexual, bisexual, heterosexual, our twentieth century terms 0:23:36.400 --> 0:23:41.280 which for me really have very little meaning. I've never myself, 0:23:41.320 --> 0:23:44.760