artists as people whose sole purpose should be to uncover the illusion of America . He insists that “ the artist cannot and must not take anything for granted , but must drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides .”
In the 1940s , a decade before Baldwin would meet Hansberry , he was in a community with Harlem Renaissance writers and soon to be expatriates Richard Wright and Countee Cullen , and shared a unique and transformative relationship with visual artist Beaufort Delaney . Baldwin biographer David Leeming tells us that “ Delaney was to reconcile for his protégé the music of the Harlem streets with the music of the Harlem churches , and this helped Baldwin reconcile his sexual awakening with his artistic awakening .”
Baldwin ’ s politicization in Harlem , the Village , and Paris functioned like a rites of passage and offers insight into where he was at the first point of connection with Lorraine . By the time they formally met , he was an openly queer public intellectual expatriate and an established novelist , playwright , and essayist . Baldwin had become , as he would say , “ The artist here to disturb the peace .”
Lorraine Hansberry was twenty-nine to Jimmy Baldwin ’ s thirty-four when she walked into the Actor ’ s Studio in the winter of 1958 , where Giovanni ’ s Room was being workshopped for stage production . She had heard of Baldwin ’ s work and he was aware of her organizing and journalistic grind . At this production , in the face of unfavorable responses to the play by Broadway executives , Hansberry publicly defended Baldwin ’ s willingness to introduce theater audiences to homosexual content , which spoke to her own developing feminist and queer politics . This fearless representation of sexual diversity , Hansberry felt , was consistent with the voice an artist must have if they are to be agents of social change . She saw Baldwin as an ally to which he responded , “ I was enormously grateful to her , she seemed to speak for me ; and afterward she talked to me with a gentleness and generosity never to be forgotten .” ( Baldwin : 1969 ).
Hansberry ’ s clarity about the role of an artist developed long before meeting Baldwin in 1958 . She was a highly visible activist and public intellectual , politicized by her family ’ s social justice work in Chicago . When she moved to New York in 1951 , she was immediately employed as a writer for Paul Robeson ’ s Pan Africanist and communist inspired newspaper called Freedom , a publication edited by Louis E . Burnman whom she also identified as a mentor . Like Baldwin , but from a different proximity , Hansberry too was shaped by the Harlem Renaissance and cited Langston Hughes as being one of the most influential writers on her work . A one-time student enrolled in a W . E . B . DuBois African studies course , and a person drawn to the work of fellow journalist for Freedom and Black woman playwright Alice Childress , she learned early that in the achievement of Black rights , artists didn ’ t have the luxury to surrender their platforms to merely entertain , nor did she prescribe to one particular political strategy in the pursuit of social justice . In a 1962 speech titled “ A Challenge to Artist ,” Hansberry speaks candidly about her impatience with apolitical artists , saying :
“ Finally , I think that all of us who are thinking such things [ as civil rights ], who wish to exercise these rights that we are here defending tonight , must really exercise them . Speaking to my fellow artists in particular , I think that we must paint them , sing them , write about them — all these matters which are not currently fashionable . Otherwise … we are indulging in a luxurious complicity — and no other thing .”
Perhaps one of the most compelling occurrences that affirm the intimate relationship between Baldwin and Hansberry was expressed in a letter he had written to his brother David from the South of France . In the 1965 letter he writes , “ The night of January 12 , when my fever reached its rather alarming peak , was the night Lorraine Hansberry died .” He described his condition that evening as a psychosomatic one . Two years leading up to Hansberry ’ s passing , Baldwin was devastated by the season of death that reached across transnational borders to engulf his life . He returned to America to address the 16th Street Baptist church bombing that killed four little girls , the abduction and murder of civil rights workers ( James Chaney , Andrew Goodman , and Michael Schwerner ) in Mississippi , and the murder of Medgar Evers on his porch in front of his family . Just one month after Hansberry ’ s passing would be the assassination of Malcolm X , who attended Hansberry ’ s funeral and who Baldwin was scheduled to meet with , along with Martin L . King Jr . on February 23 , two days after Malcolm was killed . It was in the spirit of grief and gratitude that
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