| Interment Location | Visited | |
|---|---|---|
| Hartsdale, NY | May 30, 2022 |
“I don’t try to be prophetic, as I don’t sit down to write literature,” author and intellect James Baldwin told interviewer Jordan Elgrably in August 1983. “It is simply this: a writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees. No one can tell him about that. No one can control that reality. It reminds me of something Pablo Picasso was supposed to have said to Gertrude Stein while he was painting her portrait. Gertrude said, ‘I don’t look like that.’ And Picasso replied, ‘You will.’ And he was right.”
Baldwin both grew up and spent his early adulthood in New York City, where he endured frequent discrimination as a Black person. At 28 years old he left for France, and he returned nine years later as an established writer of Black experiences amidst the Civil Rights Movement. He explained his mentality in leaving and defended his literary focus on race in an escalated discussion with Professor Paul Weiss on The Dick Cavett Show in June 1968: “When I left this country, in 1948, I left this country for one reason only — one reason. I didn’t care where I went. I might’ve gone to Hong Kong, I might’ve gone to Timbuktu. I ended up in Paris — on the streets in Paris — with $40 in my pocket on the theory that nothing worse could happen to me there than had already happened to me here. You talk about making it as a writer by yourself. You had to be able then to turn up all the antennae of which you live because once you turn your back on this society, you may die! You may die! And it’s very hard to sit at a typewriter and concentrate on that if you’re afraid of the world around you. The years I lived in Paris did one thing for me: they released me from that particular social terror which is not the paranoia of my own mind, but a real social danger visible in the face of every cop, every boss, everybody.”
Baldwin is buried with his mother, Berdis, whom he predeceased by twelve years. The writer was gay, although that term did not resonate with him. “The word gay has always rubbed me the wrong way. I never understood exactly what is meant by it. I don’t want to sound distant or patronizing because I don’t really feel that,” he explained to the Village Voice in 1984. “I simply feel it’s a world that has little to do with me, with where I did my growing up. I was never at home in it. Even in my early years in the Village, what I saw of that world absolutely frightened me, bewildered me. I didn’t understand the necessity of all the role playing. And in a way I still don’t.”
Baldwin debated influential conservative thinker William F. Buckley, Jr. of the National Review on February 18, 1965 at the Cambridge Union, Cambridge University, England. The debate occurred two weeks after Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Abernathy were jailed in Selma, Alabama, during their fight for Black voting rights, three days before the murder of Malcolm X, and 17 days ahead of the first attempt by demonstrators to march from Selma to Montgomery, which was dubbed “Bloody Sunday.” The subject of the debate was, “Has the American Dream Been Achieved at the Expense of the American Negro?” Dated racial terminology aside, Baldwin’s affirmation of the premise and Buckley’s dismissive assertion that Black people were not doing enough to enable their own social uplift are arguments that remain familiar to adherents of the American political left and right.
Fast Facts
Born: August 2, 1924 in Manhattan, New York, New York
Died: December 1, 1987 in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France
Cause of Death: Stomach Cancer
Age: 63
Interment: Ferncliff Cemetery, Hartsdale, New York
"I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."
- James Baldwin
in his book Notes of a Native Son, published in 1955
An exhibit on James Baldwin at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. It includes his 1962 novel, Another Country, and a playbill for his theatrical production inspired by the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till, Blues for Mister Charlie, from 1964. In the top left is an April 1964 letter to Baldwin from Julian Bond of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, inviting the writer to a public hearing in Washington relating to civil rights violations in Mississippi.
Sources Consulted and Further Reading
Aeon Video. “James Baldwin vs William F Buckley: A legendary debate from 1965 .” YouTube video, 58:42. August 13, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tek9h3a5wQ.
Baldwin, James. Notes of a Native Son. Boston: Beacon Press, 1955.
The Dick Cavett Show. “James Baldwin and Paul Weiss’s HEATED Debate On Discrimination in America | The Dick Cavett Show.” YouTube, 12:57. June 24, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzH5IDnLaBA.
The Dick Cavett Show. “James Baldwin Discusses Racism | The Dick Cavett Show.” YouTube, 17:08. June 24, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWwOi17WHpE.
Elgrably, Jordan. “James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78.” Paris Review. Spring 1984. https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2994/the-art-of-fiction-no-78-james-baldwin.
PBS Newshour. “Baldwin-Buckley race debate still resonates 55 years on.” YouTube, 18:59. February 16, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRzkHgMaPL4.
Peck, Raoul, director. I Am Not Your Negro. Magnolia Pictures, 2016. 1hr., 33 min.
Village Voice. “James Baldwin on Being Gay in America.” June 26, 1984. https://www.villagevoice.com/james-baldwin-on-being-gay-in-america/.
