James Baldwin 20th Anniversary Commemoration: Remembering the Life and Work of the Legendary Writer and Civil Rights Activist
James Baldwin, the legendary African American writer and civil rights activist, died 20 years ago this week. This Sunday in Harlem, the Schomburg Center for Research on Black Culture is holding a 20th anniversary commemoration. Take a look at Baldwin’s life and his work with his sister-in-law Carole Weinstein, and hear Baldwin in his own words. We also hear Tony Award-nominated actor Calvin Levels performing a part of his acclaimed one-man show, “James Baldwin: Down from the Mountaintop.”
This week marks the twentieth anniversary of the death of the legendary African American writer, civil rights activist, James Baldwin.
He was born in Harlem in 1924. He grew up in poverty in New York City. In 1948, he moved to Paris to become a full-time writer. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, was an autobiographical work about growing up in Harlem. It’s considered a classic American work. Throughout the rest of the ’50s, Baldwin moved from Paris to New York City to Istanbul. His novels Notes of a Native Son and Giovanni’s Room explored themes of homosexuality and interracial relationships. As an openly gay man, James Baldwin also became increasingly outspoken in condemning discrimination against gay people.
Baldwin returned to the United States in the early ’60s. His book The Fire Next Time dealt with issues of black identity and the state of racial struggle. Baldwin became a fiery spokesperson for the Civil Rights Movement. Here, he speaks at Oakland, California’s Castlemont High School. It was June 1963.
JAMES BALDWIN: I think the other reason, and perhaps the most important reason, that I am throwing these suggestions out to you tonight is that in this country, every black man born in this country, until this present moment, is born into a country which assures him, in as many ways as it can find, that he is not worth the dirt he walks on. Every Negro boy and every Negro girl born in this country until this present moment undergoes the agony of trying to find in the body politic, in the body social, outside himself/herself, some image of himself or herself which is not demeaning. Now, many, indeed, have survived, and at an incalculable cost, and many more have perished and are perishing every day. If you tell a child and do your best to prove to the child that he is not worth life, it is entirely possible that sooner or later the child begins to believe it.
An excerpt of James Baldwin. And you can go to the website at http://democracynow.org
This weekend, 3:00 at the Schomburg Center at 515 Malcolm X Boulevard; 7:00, there will be a panel discussion with Cornel West and Amiri Baraka and others, -all the more reason to go.
2 comments:
Thanks for sharing this with us; James Baldwin and the Harlem Renaissance.
Great Man!
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