James Baldwin: Writer And Civil Rights Activist

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“James Baldwin” James Baldwin was a writer and civil rights activist. He was born on August 2, 1924 and died on December 1, 1987. James Arthur Baldwin was an important African American prolific writer of novels, poetry, short stories, plays and essays, as well as a civil rights activist. He was born in Harlem, New York, USA. He would be the first child of the nine children his mother, Emma Berdis Jones would give birth to. James Baldwin would never know who his biological father was. James Baldwin was young when his mother married David Baldwin, a factory worker as well as a preacher who would adopt him. James Baldwin’s family was poor and the relationship between the father and the son would not be good. James Baldwin would attend DeWitt…show more content…
LaGuardia. James Baldwin would end up leaving his family at the age of seventeen to settle in Greenwich Village, a neighborhood of New York City famous for its artistic environment and free thinkers. In the early 1940s he would abandon his religious faith and focus fully instead on his passion for literature. Making a living by doing odd jobs, James Baldwin began writing short stories, essays and book reviews. These early texts would be published in Notes of a Native Son in 1955. He would choose such title in clear reference to his friend Richard Wright’s 1908 – 1960 novels Native Son in 1940. Eventually James Baldwin would become aware of his homosexuality and in 1948, disgusted by the amount of prejudice against both blacks and homosexuals in the United States, he would leave to Paris in his mid-twenties where he would spend virtually the rest of his life. James Baldwin is widely considered as one of the greatest writers of his generation. He would be very influenced by the situation of blacks in his country as well as his personal experience of poverty when he lived in Harlem. Ultimately James Baldwin would become one of the most prominent figures of the Civil Rights Movement. Discrimination, be it racial of sexual would be a

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