James Arthur Baldwin (né Jones; August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer and civil rights activist who was praised for his essays, novels, plays, and poems. His 1953 novel Go Tell It on the Mountain was listed by Time magazine as one of the top 100 English-language novels. His 1955 essay collection Notes of a Native Son helped him become known as a voice for human equality. His 1965 debate with William Buckley is seen as one of the most important debates on race in the United States. Baldwin was a respected public figure and speaker, especially during the civil rights movement in the United States.

Baldwin’s fiction asked important personal questions and dilemmas while showing the challenges of social and psychological pressures. Themes such as masculinity, sexuality, race, and class combine to create complex stories that influenced the civil rights movement and the gay liberation movement in mid-20th-century America. His main characters are often, but not always, African-American. Gay and bisexual men appear frequently in his work, such as in his 1956 novel Giovanni’s Room. His characters often face challenges from within and outside themselves as they seek acceptance.

Baldwin’s work continues to influence artists and writers. His unfinished manuscript Remember This House was expanded and turned into the 2016 documentary film I Am Not Your Negro, which won the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary. His 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk was adapted into a 2018 film of the same name, which received a lot of praise.

Early life

James Baldwin was born on August 2, 1924, at Harlem Hospital in New York City. His mother, Emma Berdis Jones, was born in 1903 on Deal Island, Maryland. She moved to Harlem, New York, when she was 19 years old to escape racial discrimination in the South during the Great Migration. James was born out of wedlock, and Emma never told him who his biological father was.

Emma Jones cared for her son alone at first. In 1927, she married David Baldwin, a laborer and Baptist preacher. David was born in Bunkie, Louisiana, and preached in New Orleans before moving to Harlem in 1919. It is unclear how David and Emma met. In James Baldwin’s book Go Tell It on the Mountain, the characters based on them are introduced by the man’s sister. Emma and David had eight children together: George, Barbara, Wilmer, David Jr., Gloria, Ruth, Elizabeth, and Paula. James took his stepfather’s last name, Baldwin. He rarely wrote or spoke about his mother, but when he did, he expressed love and admiration for her, often mentioning her kind smile.

James lived in Harlem for much of his childhood, which was still a mixed-race neighborhood in the early years of the Great Migration. His stepfather, David Baldwin, was likely born before the Emancipation in 1863, making him much older than Emma. David’s mother, Barbara, was born enslaved and lived with the Baldwins in New York until her death when James was seven. David had a light-skinned half-brother fathered by his mother’s white enslaver and a sister named Barbara, whom James and others called “Taunty.” David had been married before and had a daughter who was the same age as Emma, as well as two sons: David, who died in jail, and Sam, who was eight years older than James. Sam lived with the Baldwins for a time and once saved James from drowning.

James called his stepfather “father” throughout his life. He learned he was not David’s biological son after overhearing a comment during a conversation between his parents in late 1940. He told a friend, Emile Capouya, about this discovery. David and James had a difficult relationship, and they sometimes fought because James read books, liked movies, and had white friends, which David believed threatened James’s “salvation.” David also hated white people and hoped God would punish them. During the 1920s and 1930s, David worked at a soft-drink bottling factory but was eventually laid off. His anger and hatred made him less popular as a preacher, and he sometimes yelled at his family.

Near the end of his life, David Baldwin became paranoid and was sent to a mental asylum in 1943. He died of tuberculosis on July 29, 1943, the same day Emma gave birth to their last child, Paula. James visited his dying stepfather the day before and later wrote about their relationship in his essay Notes of a Native Son. He described David as loving his children despite his harsh ways. David’s funeral was held on James’s 19th birthday, around the same time as the Harlem riot.

As the oldest child, James worked part-time from an early age to help support his family. He was shaped by the challenges in his home, the poverty, and the discrimination he saw. Friends he sat next to in church turned to drugs, crime, or prostitution. Baldwin once wrote, “I never had a childhood… I did not have any human identity… I was born dead.”

Baldwin wrote little about his school experiences. At age five, he attended Public School 24 (P.S. 24) in Harlem. The school’s principal, Gertrude E. Ayer, was the first Black principal in the city. She and his teachers recognized his talent early and encouraged his writing. Ayer believed Baldwin’s writing skills came from his mother, whose notes to the school were admired by teachers. By fifth grade, Baldwin had read works by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Charles Dickens. He wrote a song praised by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and won a prize for a short story published in a church newspaper. His teachers recommended he visit the Harlem library on 135th Street, which became his favorite place. He requested his papers and belongings be donated to the library on his deathbed.

At P.S. 24, Baldwin met Orilla “Bill” Miller, a white teacher from the Midwest. Miller took Baldwin to see an all-Black version of Macbeth at the Lafayette Theatre, which inspired Baldwin’s dream of becoming a playwright. David Baldwin was hesitant to let his stepson attend the play, but Emma insisted on the importance of education. Miller later directed Baldwin’s first play.

After P.S. 24, Baldwin attended Frederick Douglass Junior High School in Harlem. There, he met Herman W. “Bill” Porter, a Harvard graduate who became the school’s newspaper advisor. Porter helped Baldwin write his first published essay, Harlem—Then and Now, which appeared in the Douglass Pilot in 1937. Baldwin also met Countee Cullen, a poet from the Harlem Renaissance, who taught French and influenced Baldwin’s dream of living in France. Baldwin graduated from Frederick Douglass Junior High in 1938.

In 1938, Baldwin enrolled at De Witt Clinton High School in the Bronx, a school mostly attended by white and Jewish students. He worked on the school magazine, The Magpie, with future photographer Richard Avedon and future publishers Emile Capouya and Sol Stein. Baldwin wrote poems and other pieces for the magazine. He graduated from De Witt Clinton High School in 1941. His yearbook listed his career interests.

Career

James Baldwin moved to Paris, France, when he was 24 years old. He was tired of the unfair treatment of Black people in the United States and wanted to learn more about himself and his writing. Baldwin did not want people to see him only as a Black person or a Black writer. He also hoped to understand his mixed feelings about his identity and escape the sadness that many young African-American men faced.

In 1948, Baldwin received a $1,500 grant (worth about $20,100 in 2025) from a program called the Rosenwald Fellowship. The money was meant to help him create a book that included photographs and essays about churches and religion in Harlem, New York. Baldwin worked with a friend named Theodore Pelatowski, whom he met through a photographer named Richard Avedon. Although the book, titled Unto the Dying Lamb, was never completed, the grant helped Baldwin move to France. After saying goodbye to his mother and younger siblings, Baldwin traveled to Paris on November 11, 1948, with only $40. He gave most of the grant money to his mother. Baldwin later said that he left America because of issues like race, religion, and the way he felt about himself, but race was the main reason. He hoped for a better life in Paris.

In Paris, Baldwin became part of a group of artists and writers who were interested in social and political change. He began publishing his work in books and magazines, including Zero, which was edited by a friend named Themistocles Hoetis. Baldwin lived in Paris for nine years, mostly in a neighborhood called Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and sometimes traveled to other places like Switzerland and Spain. He stayed with friends and in hotels, including the Hôtel Verneuil, where many struggling writers lived. During this time, Baldwin met many famous people, such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Truman Capote. He also formed a close relationship with a young man named Lucien Happersberger, who stayed with him for several years. Baldwin and Happersberger remained friends for 39 years.

Even though life in Paris was difficult, Baldwin felt free from the racism that troubled him in America. He wrote about his experiences in Paris, including an essay called "Equal in Paris," where he described how he was treated as an equal to a white American friend who was arrested with him. During his time in Paris, Baldwin wrote several important works, including an essay titled "The Negro in Paris," which discussed differences between Black Americans and Black Africans in France. He also wrote about issues like discrimination against homosexuals and the challenges faced by Black writers.

Baldwin also wrote two essays criticizing the work of a writer named Richard Wright. He argued that Wright’s books, which focused on protest and social issues, were not effective because they ignored the complexity of human life. Baldwin believed that only by understanding the contradictions and struggles of life could people truly be free. These essays helped Baldwin gain recognition as a talented writer.

In 1953, Beauford Delaney, a friend of Baldwin, moved to France. This event was very important for Baldwin that year. Around the same time, Baldwin’s group of friends changed, and he continued to write and explore new ideas.

Personal life

James Baldwin was a man who openly identified as queer. However, he believed that sexuality was a private matter and did not use the word "gay" to describe himself, as he felt it was too limited. Throughout his life, Baldwin had relationships with both men and women. In 1985, he wrote that he "fell in love with, lived with and almost married" a woman when he was 22, but he considered Lucien Happersberger the "one true love" of his life. According to Dwight A. McBride, Baldwin saw himself as a mix of many identities—such as being Black, gay, an expatriate, and an activist—but not limited to any one of them. He believed these identities had to be adjusted depending on the situations he faced.

On December 1, 1987, Baldwin died from stomach cancer in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France. He was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, near New York City.

Fred Nall Hollis cared for Baldwin during his final days. Nall had been friends with Baldwin since the 1970s, when Baldwin would buy him drinks at the Café de Flore. Before Baldwin’s death, Nall talked to him about racism in Alabama. Nall told Baldwin, "Through your books, you helped me feel less guilty about being bigoted because of where I came from and because of my homosexuality." Baldwin replied, "No, you helped me by telling me this."

A few hours after Baldwin’s death, his novel Harlem Quartet, published earlier that year, won the French-American Friendship Prize. Earlier that month, the book had narrowly lost the Prix Femina, an award given to the "best foreign novel of the year."

At the time of Baldwin’s death, he was working on a memoir titled Remember This House, which focused on his personal experiences with civil rights leaders Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. After Baldwin’s death, the publishing company McGraw-Hill sued his estate to recover the $200,000 advance they had paid for the book. However, the lawsuit was dropped by 1990. The unfinished manuscript later became the basis for the 2016 documentary film I Am Not Your Negro by Raoul Peck.

After Baldwin’s death, a legal dispute arose over the ownership of his home in France. Baldwin had been buying the house from his landlady, Jeanne Faure, but did not fully own it at the time of his death. Faure wanted the house to remain in her family. Baldwin’s home, nicknamed "Chez Baldwin," has become a focus for scholars, artists, and activists. The National Museum of African American History and Culture has an online exhibit titled "Chez Baldwin," which explores Baldwin’s life and legacy through his French home. In 2018, Magdalena J. Zaborowska wrote a book titled Me and My House: James Baldwin's Last Decade in France, using photos of his home and belongings to discuss topics like politics, race, being queer, and domestic life.

Over the years, several groups tried to save Baldwin’s home and turn it into an artists’ residency, but none had support from Baldwin’s estate. In February 2016, the French newspaper Le Monde published an article by Thomas Chatterton Williams, a Black American writer living in France, which inspired activists to take action. In June 2016, Shannon Cain, an American writer and activist, occupied the house for 10 days as a protest. A French group called Les Amis de la Maison Baldwin formed to buy the house with funding from U.S. donors, but the effort failed without Baldwin’s estate’s support. Attempts to get the French government to protect the property were ignored by local officials, including the mayor of Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Joseph Le Chapelain, who claimed, "Nobody’s ever heard of James Baldwin." In 2019, construction began on an apartment complex where Baldwin’s home once stood.

Themes

In all of James Baldwin's works, especially his novels, the main characters face challenges in a "cage of reality." They struggle to find their true selves while dealing with the limits of life and their position on the edges of society, which is influenced by unfair treatment and biases. Baldwin links several of his main characters—John in Go Tell It on the Mountain, Rufus in Another Country, Richard in Blues for Mister Charlie, and Giovanni in Giovanni's Room—as sharing a similar experience of being restricted. According to biographer David Leeming, each of these characters "represents the struggles of the society shown in their story and the larger world it symbolizes." These characters try to find their place in their social environment, and in some cases, like Fonny in If Beale Street Could Talk and Leo in Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, they achieve a sense of identity that is not perfect but helps them cope with life. A central idea in Baldwin's stories is that personal challenges can only be resolved through love. Here is Leeming's explanation:
— David Adams Leeming, James Baldwin: A Biography

Social and political activism

In the summer of 1957, James Baldwin returned to the United States while Congress debated civil rights laws. He was deeply affected by the story of Dorothy Counts, a young girl who faced a crowd while trying to enter a school in Charlotte, North Carolina, to end racial segregation. Philip Rahv, an editor at Partisan Review, encouraged Baldwin to write about the situation in the American South. Baldwin felt nervous about the trip but traveled to Charlotte, where he met Martin Luther King Jr., and Montgomery, Alabama. He wrote two essays about his experiences: one published in Harper's magazine titled "The Hard Kind of Courage" and another in Partisan Review titled "Nobody Knows My Name." Baldwin later wrote more articles about the civil rights movement for magazines like Mademoiselle, The New York Times Magazine, and The New Yorker. His 1962 essay, called "Down at the Cross" by The New Yorker, became part of a book titled The Fire Next Time, along with a shorter essay from The Progressive.

Baldwin supported the goals of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Joining CORE allowed him to travel across the South and speak about racial inequality. His experiences in both the North and South helped him understand the racial challenges in the United States.

In 1963, Baldwin gave lectures in the South for CORE, visiting cities like Durham, Greensboro, and New Orleans. He shared his views on race, which were between the more aggressive approach of Malcolm X and the peaceful methods of Martin Luther King Jr. Baldwin believed that socialism could help address racial issues in the United States.

By early 1963, newspapers began to notice Baldwin’s sharp analysis of racism and his powerful descriptions of the struggles faced by Black people. Time magazine featured Baldwin on its cover in May 1963, calling him a writer who "expresses with such poignancy and abrasiveness the dark realities of the racial ferment in North and South."

During the 1963 Birmingham riots, Baldwin sent a message to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, blaming the violence on the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, Senator James Eastland, and President Kennedy for not using his position to promote fairness. Kennedy invited Baldwin to meet with him, and later, Baldwin brought others, including psychologist Kenneth B. Clark, actor Harry Belafonte, and writer Lorraine Hansberry, to discuss civil rights. Though the meeting was difficult, it helped highlight the moral side of the civil rights movement.

James Baldwin’s FBI file contained 1,884 pages, collected between 1960 and the early 1970s. During this time, the FBI also collected information on other writers, such as 276 pages on Richard Wright and 110 pages on Truman Capote.

Baldwin participated in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963, standing with friends like Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, and Marlon Brando.

Baldwin’s sexuality created challenges for his activism. The civil rights movement was not welcoming to gay men, and Baldwin and Bayard Rustin were the only openly queer men involved. Although Rustin and King were close, some people were uncomfortable with Rustin’s sexual orientation. King once described homosexuality as a mental illness that could be overcome. King’s advisor, Stanley Levison, said Baldwin and Rustin were better suited to lead a movement for LGBTQ+ rights than for civil rights. This led King to distance himself from both men. Baldwin was not invited to speak at the March on Washington, even though he had been a key figure in the movement, because of his sexuality.

At the time, Baldwin did not openly discuss his sexual orientation, even though his books, such as Giovanni’s Room and Just Above My Head, included stories about queer characters. In his book, Kevin Mumford wrote that Baldwin chose to "pass as straight" rather than confront people who opposed him.

After the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham in 1963, Baldwin called for a nationwide campaign of civil disobedience. He traveled to Selma, Alabama, where SNCC was helping Black people register to vote. He saw people waiting in long lines for hours while armed officers watched or used force against activists. Later, Baldwin spoke in a church, blaming the federal government for failing to protect Black people. He told a reporter that the government could send troops to the South to help. Baldwin criticized the Kennedys for not acting. In March 1965, Baldwin joined the Selma to Montgomery Marches, walking 50 miles to Montgomery under the protection of federal troops.

Baldwin did not consider himself a "civil rights activist" or part of the civil rights movement. He agreed with Malcolm X’s idea that citizens should not have to fight for their rights. In a 1964 interview, Baldwin said the civil rights movement was not a revolution but a "very peculiar revolution" that aimed to change American society. In a 1979 speech, he called it "the latest slave rebellion."

In 1968, Baldwin signed a pledge to refuse paying income taxes in protest of the Vietnam War. He also supported the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which led the FBI to create a file on Baldwin.

Inspiration and relationships

James Baldwin was greatly influenced by the painter Beauford Delaney. In his book The Price of the Ticket (1985), Baldwin described Delaney as an important figure in his life. Later, Baldwin received support from Richard Wright, whom he called "the greatest black writer in the world." Wright and Baldwin became friends, and Wright helped Baldwin earn a $500 fellowship from the Eugene F. Saxton Memorial Foundation. Baldwin’s essay Notes of a Native Son and his book of the same name reference Wright’s 1940 novel Native Son. However, in Baldwin’s 1949 essay Everybody’s Protest Novel, he criticized Native Son for lacking believable characters and depth, similar to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). Their friendship ended after this. When interviewed by Julius Lester, Baldwin explained: "I knew Richard and I loved him. I was not attacking him; I was trying to clarify something for myself."

In 1949, Baldwin met and fell in love with Lucien Happersberger, a 17-year-old boy. However, Happersberger’s marriage three years later caused Baldwin great sadness. After the marriage ended, they reconciled, and Happersberger stayed with Baldwin until his death in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Happersberger died on August 21, 2010, in Switzerland.

Baldwin was a close friend of the singer, pianist, and civil rights activist Nina Simone. Baldwin, along with Langston Hughes and Lorraine Hansberry, helped Simone learn about the Civil Rights Movement. Baldwin also shared literary ideas that influenced her work. Baldwin and Hansberry met with Robert F. Kennedy, along with Kenneth Clark and Lena Horne, to encourage Kennedy to support civil rights laws.

Baldwin influenced the work of French painter Philippe Derome, whom he met in Paris in the early 1960s. Baldwin also knew many famous people, including Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston, Billy Dee Williams, Huey P. Newton, Nikki Giovanni, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Genet (with whom he worked to support the Black Panther Party), Lee Strasberg, Elia Kazan, Rip Torn, Alex Haley, Miles Davis, Amiri Baraka, Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothea Tanning, Leonor Fini, Margaret Mead, Josephine Baker, Allen Ginsberg, Chinua Achebe, and Maya Angelou. Baldwin wrote about his "political relationship" with Malcolm X. He worked with childhood friend Richard Avedon on the 1964 book Nothing Personal.

Baldwin was fictionalized as the character Marion Dawes in the 1967 novel The Man Who Cried I Am by John A. Williams.

Maya Angelou called Baldwin her "friend and brother" and said he helped prepare the way for her 1969 autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. In 1986, the French government honored Baldwin with the title of Commandeur de la Légion d'Honneur.

Baldwin was also a close friend of Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison, who lived in the same apartment building in New York for a time. After Baldwin’s death, Morrison wrote a eulogy for him in The New York Times, titled "Life in His Language." In it, she said Baldwin inspired her to become a writer and showed her the power of writing.

After Baldwin’s death, many African-American writers and critics, including Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, Henry Louis Gates Jr., John Edgar Wideman, and John A. Williams, criticized the lack of major awards given to Baldwin, such as the National Book Award or the Pulitzer Prize. They also expressed concern that similar neglect might happen again, even though Morrison had not received such awards for her novel Beloved.

Although Baldwin and Truman Capote knew each other, they were not close friends. In fact, Capote criticized Baldwin several times.

Legacy and critical response

Literary critic Harold Bloom described Baldwin as "one of the most important moral essayists in the United States." Baldwin had a strong influence on other writers. Toni Morrison helped edit the first two volumes of Baldwin's fiction and essays for the Library of America: Early Novels & Stories (1998) and Collected Essays (1998). A third volume, Later Novels (2015), was edited by Darryl Pinckney. In February 2013, Pinckney gave a speech to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The New York Review of Books. During the speech, he said, "No other Black writer I had read was as literary as Baldwin in his early essays, not even Ralph Ellison. Baldwin's sentences and tone combine beauty and calm in a way that feels surprising, blending the style of Henry James, the Bible, and Harlem." One of Baldwin's most important short stories, "Sonny's Blues," appears in many college literature anthologies.

A street in San Francisco, Baldwin Court in the Bayview neighborhood, is named after him. In 1987, Kevin Brown, a photojournalist from Baltimore, created the National James Baldwin Literary Society. This group organizes free public events to celebrate Baldwin's life and work. In 1992, Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, started the James Baldwin Scholars program. This initiative helps students of color from underserved communities prepare for college through one year of coursework and tutoring. After this year, students may apply to attend Hampshire or another four-year college.

Spike Lee's 1996 film Get on the Bus includes a Black gay character, played by Isaiah Washington, who fights a homophobic character and says, "This is for James Baldwin and Langston Hughes." Baldwin's name appears in the lyrics of the Le Tigre song "Hot Topic," released in 1999. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed James Baldwin among the 100 Greatest African Americans.

In 2005, the United States Postal Service created a postage stamp featuring Baldwin. The stamp showed him on the front and included a short biography on the back. In 2012, Baldwin was added to the Legacy Walk, an outdoor display that honors LGBTQ history. In 2014, East 128th Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues was named "James Baldwin Place" to mark his 90th birthday. Baldwin lived in that neighborhood and attended P.S. 24. Readings of his work were held at The National Black Theatre, and a month-long art exhibition featured works by New York Live Arts and artist Maureen Kelleher. The events were attended by Council Member Inez Dickens, who led the campaign to honor Baldwin, as well as Baldwin's family, theater and film figures, and community members.

Also in 2014, Baldwin was one of the first people honored in the Rainbow Honor Walk, a walk of fame in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood that celebrates LGBTQ individuals who made important contributions. In 2014, The Social Justice Hub at The New School's University Center was named the Baldwin Rivera Boggs Center, honoring Baldwin, Sylvia Rivera, and Grace Lee Boggs. In 2016, Raoul Peck released the documentary I Am Not Your Negro, based on Baldwin's unfinished manuscript Remember This House. The film explores Black history, connecting the Civil Rights Movement to the Black Lives Matter movement and examining Black representation in Hollywood.

In 2017, Scott Timberg wrote an essay for the Los Angeles Times noting that Baldwin's work remained relevant 30 years after his death. He concluded, "Baldwin is not just a writer for the ages, but a scribe whose work speaks directly to ours." In June 2019, Baldwin's home on the Upper West Side was recognized as a historic site by New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission and added to the National Register of Historic Places.

In June 2019, Baldwin was one of the first 50 people honored on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor at the Stonewall National Monument in New York City. This monument celebrates LGBTQ rights and history and was unveiled during the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. At the Paris Council in June 2019, the city of Paris voted to name a place in the capital after Baldwin. The project was confirmed in 2019 and planned for completion in 2020. In 2021, Paris City Hall announced that Baldwin's name would be given to the first media library in the 19th arrondissement, scheduled to open in 2024.

On February 1, 2024, Google honored Baldwin with a Google Doodle. In 2024, Baldwin appeared as a character in the television series Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, played by Chris Chalk. On May 17, 2024, a blue plaque was placed by the Nubian Jak Community Trust/Black History Walks to honor Baldwin at the site where he visited the C. L. R. James Library in London in 1985. On August 2, 2024, The New York Public Library's Schomburg Center opened an exhibition, JIMMY! God's Black Revolutionary Mouth, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Baldwin's birth. The exhibition will run until February 28, 2025, and will include related events and a display of Baldwin's manuscripts in the James Baldwin: Mountain to Fire exhibition.

Honors and awards

• Guggenheim Fellowship, 1954
• Eugene F. Saxton Memorial Trust Award
• Foreign Drama Critics Award
• George Polk Memorial Award, 1963
• MacDowell Fellowships: 1954, 1958, 1960
• Langston Hughes Medal, 1978
• Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur, 1986

Works

Between 1948 and 1960, Baldwin wrote and published six short stories in different magazines. Five of these stories were later gathered in his 1965 book, Going to Meet the Man, which also included three additional stories. One story, titled "The Death of the Prophet," was not included in any book at first but was later added to The Cross of Redemption. Baldwin also wrote many essays that were first published in books. These books included some of his earlier works, such as the stories mentioned above. Some of these collections are:

Media appearances

• June 24, 1963. "A Conversation With James Baldwin" is a television interview recorded by WGBH after the Baldwin–Kennedy meeting.
• February 4, 1963. "Take This Hammer" is a television documentary created with Richard O. Moore on KQED. It focuses on the lives of Black people in San Francisco during the late 1950s.
• June 14, 1965. "Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley" is a one-hour television special recorded by the BBC. It shows a debate between Baldwin and William F. Buckley Jr., a well-known American conservative, at the Cambridge Union in England.
• 1971. "Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris" is a documentary directed by Terence Dixon.
• 1973. "James Baldwin: From Another Place" is a short documentary by Sedat Pakay. It follows Baldwin’s work as an activist in Istanbul.
• 1974. James Baldwin discusses topics such as race, political struggles, and the human condition at Wheeler Hall in Berkeley, California.
• 1975. "Assignment America; 119; Conversation with a Native Son" is a television program from WNET. It includes a conversation between Baldwin and Maya Angelou.
• 1976. "Pantechnicon; James Baldwin" is a radio program recorded by WGBH. Baldwin talks about his new book, The Devil Finds Work, which shows how he examines American films and myths.