James Baldwin: Public Intellectual

For his first work for the theater James Baldwin brought all the fervor and majestic rhetoric of the storefront churches of his childhood along with an unwavering awareness of the price those churches exacted from their worshipers. For years Sister Margaret Alexander has moved her Harlem congregation with a mixture of personal charisma and ferocious piety. But when Margaret's estranged husband, a scapegrace jazz musician, comes home to die, she is in danger of losing both her standing in the church and the son she has tried to keep on the godly path.The Amen Corner is a play about faith and family, about the gulf between black men and black women and black fathers and black sons. It is a scalding, uplifting, sorrowful and exultant masterpiece of the modern American theater.

Blues for Mister Charlie is loosely based on the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955 which brought nationwide attention to the racial violence and injustice prevalent in the South. The play centers on the murder of Richard Henry, a Black man who returns to the Southern town where he was born to recover from drug addiction and begin a new life. Shortly after his return, he’s killed by White bigot Lyle Britten, who attacks him for “not knowing his place.”

All of the published poetry of James Baldwin, including six significant poems previously only available in a limited edition. Baldwin's earliest writing was in poetic form, and Baldwin considered himself a poet throughout his lifetime. Nonetheless, his single book of poetry, Jimmy's Blues, never achieved the popularity of his novels and nonfiction. This new collection presents James Baldwin the poet, including all nineteen poems from Jimmy's Blues, as well as all the poems from a limited-edition volume called Gypsy, of which only 325 copies were ever printed, and which was in production at the time of his death. Known for his relentless honesty and startlingly prophetic insights on issues of race, gender, class, and poverty, Baldwin is just as enlightening and bold in his poetry as in his famous novels and essays.

This collection of interviews with James Baldwin covers the period 1961-1987, from the year of the publication of Nobody Knows My Names, his fourth book, to just a few weeks before his death. It includes the last formal conversation with him. Twenty-seven interviews reprinted here come from a variety of sources newspapers, radio, journals, and review and show this celebrated author in all his eloquence, anger, and perception of racial, social, and literary situations in America. He frequently referred to himself as a kind of trans-Atlantic commuter. Whether candidly discussing his own ghetto origins, his literary mission and achievements, his role in the civil rights movement, or his views on world affairs, black and white relations, Vietnam, Christianity, and fellow writers.

Interviews recorded for National Educational Television in May-June 1963. Conversations with James Baldwin, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King with Kenneth B. Clark as the moderator.

Conversation between Baldwin and Clark can be found on Noteworthy Baldwin Videos/Audios Page.

On the evening of August 25, 1970, Margaret Mead and James Baldwin sat together on a stage in New York City for a remarkable public conversation about such enduring concerns as identity, power and privilege, race and gender, beauty, religion, justice, and the relationship between the intellect and the imagination. They dove into personal experiences, historical contexts, and global perspectives on race and society.

Conversation between Baldwin and Mead can be found on Noteworthy Baldwin Videos/Audios Page.

Then 47-year-old essayist, novelist, playwright, poet, and social critic James Baldwin is interviewed by 28-year-old poet Nikki Giovanni in a two-part presentation of WNET’s “SOUL!" Taped in London in 1971, the wide-ranging conversation explores Black life in America, the struggle for racial justice and evolving gender roles, while also offering insight into the work and artistic process of two literary icons.

Conversation between Baldwin and Giovanni can be found on Noteworthy Baldwin Videos/Audios Page.