James Baldwin

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James Baldwin
Baldwin said, "I knew I was black, of course, but I also knew I was smart. I didn't know how I would use my mind, or even if I could, but that was the only thing I had to use." Baldwin attended P.S. 24 on 128th Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues in Harlem where he wrote the school song, which was used until the school closed.

James Baldwin
James Arthur Baldwin was born to Emma Berdis Jones who had left Baldwin's biological father because of his drug abuse. She moved to Harlem where Baldwin was born in Harlem Hospital in New York. Jones married a Baptist preacher, David Baldwin with whom she had eight children between 1927 and 1943. Her husband also had a son from a previous marriage who was nine years older than James.

James Baldwin
Baldwin spent much time caring for his several younger brothers and sisters. At the age of 10, he was teased and abused by two New York police officers, an instance of the racist harassment by the NYPD that he would experience again as a teenager and document in his essays. His stepfather died of tuberculosis in the summer of 1943, on the day his last child was born, just before Baldwin turned 19. Not only would the day of the funeral be Baldwin's 19th birthday,

James Baldwin
Baldwin's novels, short stories, and plays fictionalize fundamental personal questions and dilemmas amid complex social and psychological pressures. Themes of masculinity, sexuality, race, and class intertwine to create intricate narratives that run parallel with some of the major political movements toward social change in mid-twentieth-century America, such as the civil rights movement and the gay liberation movement.

James Baldwin

James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987)

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