James Baldwin
James Arthur Baldwin , fiction writer , essayist , dramatist , and poet , was born on August 2 , 1924 in Harlem , New York during the Harlem Renaissance . After graduating from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx in 1942 , he began his formal career as a writer . Baldwin was inspired by Richard Wright , despite his being called to the ministry at age fourteen in the Pentecostal faith and church dominated by his father , David Baldwin .
Although James Baldwin emerged as a major American literary voice by 1953 when he published his first novel , Go Tell It on the Mountain , his candid and militant essays found in Nobody Knows my Name ( 1961 ) and The Fire Next Time ( 1963 ) identified his writing with the emerging Civil Rights Movement of
Jay Z
Jay-Z ’ s REFORM Alliance organization has helped thousands of incarcerated African-Americans find their voice in a system working against them . One of the greatest influences of the creation of the alliance was the # FreeMeekMill movement that occurred in 2017 in which , rapper , Meek Mill , was sentenced to two-four years imprisonment for
the 1960s . Baldwin stood with Dr . Martin Luther King , Jr . at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 , when the civil rights leader delivered his “ I Have a Dream ” speech .
Baldwin ’ s work addressed major aspects of the black experience . His themes , ranging from black church culture to the antipathy between the police and black urban male dwellers , were celebrated and critiqued in Baldwin ’ s collected work . Baldwin also made music — jazz , blues , and gospel — a central force in the world of his characters .
James Arthur Baldwin died in France , his adopted home , in 1987 , and where he had once noted that for the first time he had been called simply “ an
violation of parole after being caught popping wheelies .
American .” Baldwin had lived in France from 1948 to 1962 when he returned to the United States to participate in the Civil Rights Movement . After the assassination of Dr . Martin Luther King Baldwin returned permanently to Europe to escape the racism and homophobia that threatened to suffocate his life in the United States .
Designed by Jorge Vazquez
History Facts by HW Black Student Union