Black History Speaks: James Baldwin Speaks at Q & A with educators

On the historical context of Baldwin's speech

"This was a moment — John F. Kennedy had just been killed. Medgar Evers, who was a prominent NAACP organizer in Mississippi, had just been assassinated. The Birmingham bombing of the four little girls in the church at 16th Street Baptist Church had just taken place, and so this was an incredibly contentious time in the United States with regard to issues of race and inequality and social stratification. And in many ways, you know, revisiting this essay, feels as if it could have been written the other day. That's the power of Baldwin and why he's experienced such a sort of renaissance because his work is in many ways prophetic, and his work is speaking to his lifetime. But many of the issues that he was wrestling with are things that we're struggling with today."

James Baldwin, in full James Arthur Baldwin, (born August 2, 1924, New York, New York—died December 1, 1987, Saint-Paul, France), American essayist, novelist, and playwright whose eloquence and passion on the subject of race in America made him an important voice, particularly in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in the United States and, later, through much of western Europe.The eldest of nine children, he grew up in poverty in the black ghetto of Harlem in New York City. From age 14 to 16 he was active during out-of-school hours as a preacher in a small revivalist church, a period he wrote about in his semiautobiographical first and finest novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), and in his play about a woman evangelist, The Amen Corner (performed in New York City, 1965).
After graduation from high school, he began a restless period of ill-paid jobs, self-study, and literary apprenticeship in Greenwich Village, the bohemian ( White People ) quarter of New York City. He left in 1948 for Paris, where he lived for the next eight years. (In later years, from 1969, he became a self-styled “transatlantic commuter,” living alternatively in the south of France and in New York and New England.) His second novel, Giovanni’s Room (1956), deals with the white world and concerns an American in Paris torn between his love for a man and his love for a woman. Between the two novels came a collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son (1955).
In 1957 he returned to the United States and became an active participant in the civil rights struggle that swept the nation. His book of essays, Nobody Knows My Name (1961), explores black-white relations in the United States. This theme also was central to his novel Another Country (1962), which examines sexual as well as racial issues.
Though Baldwin continued to write until his death—publishing works including Going to Meet the Man (1965), a collection of short stories; the novels Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone (1968), If Beale Street Could Talk (1974), and Just Above My Head (1979); and The Price of the Ticket (1985), a collection of autobiographical writings—none of his later works achieved the popular and critical success of his early work.

Видео Black History Speaks: James Baldwin Speaks at Q & A with educators канала Incarcerated Nation Network INC Media