PBS News Hour | James Baldwin’s lasting influence on art and activism | Season 2024

AMNA NAWAZ: This month, legendary writer and activist James Baldwin would have turned 100 years old.

Baldwin is best known for his novels and essays and as a moral voice addressing issues of race, sexuality, and the basic structure of American democracy.

Almost 40 years after his death, his words are more relevant than ever.

For our Art in Action series, Jeffrey Brown looks at his lasting legacy, explores the intersection of art and democracy, and our ongoing Canvas coverage.

JAMES BALDWIN, Author: The inequality suffered by the black population of the United States has hampered the American dream.

JEFFREY BROWN: James Baldwin, novelist, essayist, civil rights activist, intellectual, here debating with William F. Buckley Jr. at the University of Cambridge in 1965.

EDDIE GLAUDE JR., Princeton University: He is engaged in this ongoing work of self-creation, this ongoing reflection on the power of the American idea.

He brings all his intellect to this project.

JEFFREY BROWN: Eddie Glaude Jr. is a professor of African American studies at Princeton University and author of the 2020 book Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own.

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: I think if you read Baldwin carefully, you realize that the idea behind it is that we still haven’t figured out who we are because the ghosts of the past, in many ways, not only blind us but also grab us by the throat.

JEFFREY BROWN: James Arthur Baldwin was born in Harlem in 1924 and raised there by his mother and stepfather, a Baptist preacher.

The eldest of nine children, he excelled at school and served as a junior minister.

As a marginalized man, black and gay, from the age of 24 he spent years of his life abroad, much of it in France.

He wrote novels, including “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” an autobiographical book about growing up in Harlem, and “Giovanni’s Room,” about a tortured love affair between two men living in Paris, and powerful essays on race and American identity, including “Notes of a Native Son” and “The Fire Next Time.”

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: He is one of the greatest essayists we have ever produced, and I think the world has ever produced, and his subject is us.

But he does not see himself from the perspective of a victim.

He represents the views of those who have borne the burden of America’s refusal to face itself squarely.

JEFFREY BROWN: He was also a playwright and poet, an activist who spoke at civil rights demonstrations, including on television, here on “The Dick Cavett Show” in 1969.

JAMES BALDWIN: And the word “Negro” in this country ultimately serves to disguise the fact that we are talking about another man, a man like you, who wants what you want.

And while the American public would like to believe that progress has been made, they are overlooking one simple thing.

I don’t want anything for free from you.

I just want you to leave me alone so I can do it myself.

JEFFREY BROWN: Baldwin died in 1987, but he remained a powerful cultural presence that has only grown stronger over the past decade.

JAMES BALDWIN: There are days – and this is one of those days – when you wonder what your role is in this country and what your future lies ahead for you there.

JEFFREY BROWN: In the 2016 documentary “I Am Not Your Negro,” director Raoul Peck drew on Baldwin’s own words.

As he told me at the time: RAOUL PECK, director: He was already a classic, and he wrote these things 40, 50 years ago.

And when you watch the movie, you think he wrote that in the morning, the morning before he saw the movie, because those words are so precise, they’re so prescient and so impactful, you can’t do better than that.

JEFFREY BROWN: In 2018, Baldwin’s 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk was adapted by Oscar-winning director Barry Jenkins.

BARRY JENKINS, director: Whether I won eight Oscars or none, it’s James fucking Baldwin, you know?

It’s James Baldwin.

That alone is pressure enough because I wanted to honor his legacy the way I believe it should be honored.

JEFFREY BROWN: And now a celebration of his centennial, including an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery called This Morning, This Evening, So Soon: James Baldwin and the Voices of Queer Resistance, which takes its name from a short story he published in 1960, and another exhibition at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture called Jimmy: Gods Black Revolutionary Mouth, which presents Baldwin’s archive of personal papers.

There is a new album by singer-songwriter and bassist Meshell Ndegeocello called “No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin” as well as reissues of groundbreaking works with new introductions and artwork.

CREE MYLES, host, “The Baldwin 100”: What is the best lesson you have learned in the spiritual community you are in with James Baldwin?

JEFFREY BROWN: Along with a podcast, “The Baldwin 100,” in which host Cree Myles talks to contemporary writers and thinkers.

What significance does it have today, especially with regard to younger people, younger readers and younger citizens?

CREE MYLES: Despite the passage of time, its truth content is still relatively radical.

When I think of his novels and “Giovanni’s Room” and the way he dealt with sexuality, for example, these are things that he still had to deal with.

JEFFREY BROWN: Celebrated Irish novelist Colm Toibin has contributed to the new book “On James Baldwin.”

COLM TOIBIN, author of “On James Baldwin”: I guess I’m interested in him as someone who really found ways to deal with the issue of individuality versus community and being an artist in a difficult time.

But more importantly, he wrote well.

JEFFREY BROWN: Toibin saw connections to his own upbringing and told us how Baldwin influenced him as a writer and a person.

COLM TOIBIN: It’s about engaging with that great intelligence and that sensory intelligence, with someone who thinks in brilliant and dazzling ways.

But it’s also, of course, about developing strategies like he did with regard to his family, with regard to Harlem, with regard to black America, with regard to exile, with regard to trying to be an artist in a time of change, and also with regard to being a gay artist, a homosexual artist coming from a very conservative and very religious world, and also with regard to developing strategies around that that energize you rather than ones that drag you down.

JEFFREY BROWN: A common thread running through all the commemorations is Baldwin’s focus on the fragility of democracy itself.

EDDIE GLAUDE JR.: Baldwin exposes the lie that I believe is the source of the suffering that underlies this fragile project.

He is committed to democracy.

He is committed to America.

After all, we are Americans through and through.

However, this obligation also requires him to criticize them relentlessly.

JAMES BALDWIN: It is a great shock to discover that the country, your birthplace, to which you owe your life and your identity, has made no place for you in its entire system of reality.

JEFFREY BROWN: A commitment, as Glaude puts it, to the complex experiment called America.

For the PBS News Hour, I’m Jeffrey Brown.