Notes of a Native Son

James Baldwin was born in 1924 in New York, NY. His mother left his father because of his father’s drug abuse; she remarried. Baldwin’s stepfather, a Baptist preacher, is who Baldwin refers to as his father throughout his writings. Baldwin had eight younger siblings, whom he spent a lot of time taking care of throughout his childhood. Baldwin would later write in the Autobiographical Notes to the 1984 Beacon Press edition of Notes of a Native Son, “The story of my childhood is the usual bleak fantasy, and we can dismiss it with the observation that I would certainly not consider living it again” (3). From about age 14 to age 17, Baldwin preached in the Pentecostal church. But his view of religion soured, and he left the church, writing much later that he had turned to religion to deal with his personal crises. Foremost among these issues was his relationship to his stepfather. At age 18 he left home for good.

Baldwin had begun writing by age 10, and in his early teens, he found his way to Greenwich Village, where he would meet artists like Beauford Delaney. By his early twenties, Baldwin had made his way to Paris, where he would spend the first part of his writing career. Baldwin returned to the U.S. in 1957 to become involved in the civil rights movement. He traveled through the country, interviewing civil rights activists and leaders, and publishing essays on his observations. Baldwin became one of the Black leaders of the movement.

Although anyone with as extensive an oeuvre as Baldwin’s will yield his share of critics and detractors, Baldwin is recognized as one of the giants of American literature. As celebrated for his non-fiction essays as for his fiction, Baldwin’s early writings continue to receive the most attention. His emergence as a writer coincided with the early period of the high point of the long civil rights era. This was a time when White liberal support for civil rights was strong. The expansion of the violent sabotage of Black civil rights organizations by the FBI’s Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) in late 1960s, the toll of the Vietnam War, and the emergence of a general counter-culture dissipated White liberal support. Baldwin, however, remained committed to both independent Black thought and to exploring the obstacles to racial justice. His final book, The Evidence of Things Not Seen, documents the 1979-1981 Black child murders in Atlanta. His later work is regarded by Black readers and thinkers, especially, as uncompromising in its treatment of antiblack racism’s intransigence as his early work was hopeful about the possibilities for interracial community.

Baldwin would spend much of the 1970s and 1980s living in the south of France, where he died of stomach cancer in 1985.