50 Fun Facts About James Baldwin

In which New York neighbourhood was James Baldwin born in 1924?

He was born at Harlem Hospital to Emma Berdis Jones, who had come north from Maryland in the Great Migration.

What was Baldwin's surname at birth?

He took the name of his stepfather David Baldwin, a Baptist preacher his mother married in 1927.

What was the occupation of Baldwin's stepfather, David Baldwin?

Their difficult relationship fed Go Tell It on the Mountain and the essay Notes of a Native Son.

Which Renaissance-era poet taught Baldwin French at Frederick Douglass Junior High?

Baldwin said his dream of living in France was sparked by Cullen's early impression on him.

Which future photographer worked with Baldwin on the De Witt Clinton school magazine?

The Magpie staff also included the future publishers Emile Capouya and Sol Stein.

At what age did 'Brother Baldwin' first preach at Fireside Pentecostal Assembly?

He delivered his last sermon in 1941 and later wrote that the church was a mask for self-hatred and despair.

Which modernist painter became Baldwin's mentor and showed him a Black man could live by art?

Delaney later made Baldwin's house in Saint-Paul-de-Vence his second home, painting in the garden.

At which Greenwich Village restaurant did Baldwin work under Connie Williams?

The unsegregated eatery drew prominent Black diners and the friend Stan Weir, to whom Baldwin came out.

Which actor did Baldwin befriend in 1944 at a theatre class at The New School?

The friendship lasted through the Civil Rights Movement; both appeared at the 1963 March on Washington.

Which novelist, whose Native Son appeared in 1940, did Baldwin meet in 1945 and later criticise?

The essays Everybody's Protest Novel and Many Thousands Gone strained but did not end the friendship.

Baldwin's first published essay, on anti-Semitism among Black Americans, ran in which magazine?

It explored anti-Semitism among Black Americans and concluded Harlem was a parody of white America.

How much money did Baldwin have when he flew to Paris on 11 November 1948?

He gave most of his Rosenwald Fellowship to his mother and left at the age of 24.

Baldwin's 1948 Rosenwald Fellowship grant was worth how much?

It was meant for a book of photographs and essays on Harlem churches that was never finished.

In December 1949 Baldwin was jailed in Paris for receiving what stolen goods?

A friend had taken them from another hotel; the dismissal drew laughter and the essay Equal in Paris.

Baldwin's partner Lucien Happersberger, whom he met in Paris, was of which nationality?

He was 17 when they met; trips to his family's chateau in Loèches-les-Bains produced Stranger in the Village.

Baldwin's essay 'Stranger in the Village' grew out of stays in which country?

The villagers had never seen a Black man; the essay ended up in Notes of a Native Son.

What was Baldwin's first novel, published in 1953?

Time magazine later listed it among the 100 best English-language novels since 1923.

What was the working title of the first novel when Baldwin showed it to the author of Native Son?

Wright got him a $500 Harper advance, but Harper eventually declined and Knopf published it.

Who is the teenage protagonist of Baldwin's 1953 debut novel?

His violent, fanatically religious stepfather Gabriel is drawn from David Baldwin.

How many essays make up Notes of a Native Son (1955)?

They had appeared between 1948 and 1955 in Commentary, The New Leader, Partisan Review, The Reporter and Harper's.

Which essay in Notes of a Native Son attacks Uncle Tom's Cabin and Native Son?

Baldwin argued protest literature denies life by reducing people to categories.

Giovanni's Room is set in which city?

Its narrator David, an American, begins an affair with an Italian bartender while his girlfriend is in Spain.

What fate awaits Giovanni at the end of Giovanni's Room?

The whole novel is narrated on the night before his execution for murder.

Giovanni's Room surprised readers of 1956 because its characters were predominantly what?

The public expected African-American subjects; the homoerotic content caused the real controversy.

Baldwin's 1954 play The Amen Corner centres on which preacher?

She is a fictionalised Mother Horn from Fireside Pentecostal; Beah Richards earned a Tony nomination in the role.

'Sonny's Blues', Baldwin's 1957 story of two brothers, first appeared in which journal?

Sonny is a jazz musician arrested for heroin; the story was collected in Going to Meet the Man in 1965.

Baldwin completed Another Country in 1961 during a stay in which city?

He had gone to Israel meaning to continue to Africa and went to Turkey instead, the first of many stays.

Which character's downfall opens Another Country?

The novel's taboo themes included bisexuality, interracial couples and extramarital affairs.

The Fire Next Time (1963) consists of how many essays?

My Dungeon Shook is a letter to his nephew; Down at the Cross covers the church and the Nation of Islam.

The first essay of The Fire Next Time is addressed to Baldwin's nephew on what anniversary?

The nephew was 14; the essay first ran in The Progressive in late 1962.

Which magazine first ran 'Letter from a Region in My Mind', the long essay of The Fire Next Time?

It ran across two oversized issues and put Baldwin on the cover of Time in 1963.

The title The Fire Next Time comes from a couplet in what kind of song?

The spiritual is 'God Gave Noah the Rainbow Sign', often wrongly credited to 'Mary Don't You Weep'.

Baldwin appeared on the cover of which magazine in 1963 while touring the South?

Time said no other writer expressed the dark realities of the racial ferment with such poignancy and abrasiveness.

Baldwin's 1964 play Blues for Mister Charlie is loosely based on which murder?

It is dedicated to Medgar Evers and the four girls killed in the Birmingham church bombing.

Baldwin's famous 1965 debate with William F. Buckley took place at which institution?

The motion was that the American dream is at the expense of the American Negro.

By what vote did Baldwin's side win the 1965 Buckley debate?

A landslide majority of 380; the BBC paid 40 guineas to broadcast it, which covered Buckley's flight from Switzerland.

In March 1965 Baldwin joined marchers walking 50 miles from which Alabama town to Montgomery?

He had earlier watched SNCC's voter registration drive there as deputies stood by with cattle prods.

Baldwin was conspicuously not invited to speak at the 1963 March on Washington because of what?

He attended with Belafonte, Poitier and Brando but was kept out of the movement's inner circles.

No Name in the Street (1972) reflects on the assassinations of three friends: Evers, King and whom?

The same three men were the subject of the unfinished memoir Remember This House.

In 1970 Baldwin settled in which village in the south of France?

He lived there 17 years in an old Provençal house beneath the ramparts and died there in 1987.

Which French writer translated The Amen Corner into French?

Yves Montand was another friend from the Saint-Paul-de-Vence years.

If Beale Street Could Talk (1974) follows Tish and which jailed young sculptor?

Tish is 19 and pregnant; Fonny, whose real name is Alonzo Hunt, awaits trial on a false rape charge.

Who directed the 2018 film of If Beale Street Could Talk?

He had written the screenplay in 2013, before Moonlight made him famous.

Who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for If Beale Street Could Talk?

The film was also nominated for Adapted Screenplay and Original Score.

Who directed the 2016 documentary I Am Not Your Negro?

It was built from the unfinished manuscript Remember This House and won the BAFTA for Best Documentary.

Which actor narrates I Am Not Your Negro?

The film opens with Baldwin on The Dick Cavett Show in 1968.

Which honour did the French government give Baldwin in 1986?

He had also received the Langston Hughes Medal in 1978.

Baldwin died in December 1987 of which illness?

He was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, near New York.

Which Nobel laureate wrote Baldwin's New York Times eulogy, 'Life in His Language'?

They once lived in the same apartment building; she later edited his Library of America volumes.

From 1983 to 1986 Baldwin taught at which Massachusetts institution?

Hampshire later created the James Baldwin Scholars urban outreach program in his honour.