scholarly journals The Divided Mind of James Baldwin

1979 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. W. E. Bigsby
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
The Political ◽  
Lionel Trilling ◽  
New Novel ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Four Books ◽  
Critical Interest

Lionel Trilling once observed that there are certain individuals who contain the “ yes ” and “ no ” of their culture, whose personal ambivalences become paradigmatic. This would seem to be an apt description of a man whose first novel was published twenty-five years ago, a man whose career has described a neat and telling parabola and whose contradictions go to the heart of an issue which dominated the political and cultural life of mid-century America: James Baldwin. And it is perhaps not inappropriate to seize the occasion of this anniversary and of the publication of his new novel, Just Above My Head, to attempt a summation of a writer, once an articulate spokesman for black revolt, now living an expatriate existence in southern France.To date, Baldwin has written six novels: Go Tell it on the Mountain (1954), Giovanni's Room (1956), Another Country (1962), Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (1968), If Beale Street Could Talk (1974), Just Above My Head (1979); four books of essays: The Fire Next Time (1963), Nobody Knows My Name (1964), Notes of a Native Son (1964), No Name in the Street (1972); two plays: Blues for Mr. Charlie (1964), Amen Corner (1968); and one book of short stories: Going to Meet the Man (1965). Born in Harlem in 1924, he left in 1948 for France, driven out by despair of the racial situation. He returned in 1957 and in the heady days of the Civil Rights movement found himself a principal spokesman — his polemical essay, The Fire Next Time, appearing at a crucial moment in black/white relations. Outflanked by the events of the late sixties, he retreated again to Europe. His more recent novels have failed to spark the popular or critical interest of his earlier work.

James Baldwin

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
American History ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
First Century ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Twenty First Century

The book is devoted to the works of James Baldwin, one of the most compelling writers of the twentieth century. The authors examine his most important contributions – including novels, essays, short stories, poetry, and media appearances – in the wider context of American history. They demonstrate the lasting importance of his oeuvre, which was central to the Civil Rights Movement and continues to be relevant at the dawn of the twenty-first century and the Black Lives Matter era.

A Political Companion to James Baldwin

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
The Political ◽  
Individual Experience ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
And Gender

In this text, a group of prominent scholars assesses James Baldwin’s relevance to present-day political challenges. Together, they address Baldwin as a democratic theorist, activist, and citizen, examining his writings on the civil rights movement, religion, homosexuality, and women’s rights. They investigate the ways in which his work speaks to and galvanizes a collective American polity, and explore his views on the political implications of individual experience in relation to race and gender. This volume not only considers Baldwin’s works within their own historical context, but also applies the author’s insights to recent events such as the Obama presidency and the Black Lives Matter movement, emphasizing his faith in the connections between the past and present. These incisive essays will encourage a new reading of Baldwin that celebrates his significant contributions to political and democratic theory.

„I Have a Dream“

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Werner
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Empirical Study ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Political System ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
The Political ◽  
Church Staff ◽  
Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King and East Germany are connected both directly and indirectly. The Communist Party had the power to make public decisions on agenda-setting topics related to Martin Luther King. The Christian Bloc Party mostly represented the state and published books by Martin Luther King, which churches and the civil rights movement liked to use. Moreover, pacifists and civil rights activists used these books to undermine the political system in East Germany. Church institutions reported by far the most on Martin Luther King. This empirical study, which can also act as a basis for further research on Martin Luther King and East Germany, will appeal to both church staff and admirers of Martin Luther King.

Documenting SNCC and the Rural South

2018 ◽  
pp. 156-193
Author(s):  
Scott L. Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Cultural Politics ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
New Left ◽  
The Political ◽  
Rural South ◽  
James Agee ◽  
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ◽  
Walker Evans

This chapter examines the cultural politics of civil rights movement photography by analysing the work of Danny Lyon who worked as a photographer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee between 1962 and 1964. It explores how documentarians such as Robert Frank, Walker Evans, and James Agee inspired Lyon’s documentary work and how the political culture of the New Left influenced his work’s reception. The chapter first focuses on Lyon’s photographs of black SNCC activists in the South, particularly Robert Moses. Lyon’s photographs of Moses helped spread a romantic mythology around Moses and SNCC that was useful in recruiting white liberal support up North. Lyon also photographed the rural South’s landscapes and people extensively. Many in the New Left romanticized rural black southerners as true outsiders, the authentic opposites of their industrialized and commercialized societies back home. Consequently, Lyon’s photographs had the capacity to aestheticize the same conditions that SNCC recognized as the source of black subjugation. The chapter also highlights how these images and themes appeared and circulated in a civil rights movement photography book, The Movement, which Lyon contributed to and helped produce.

The Techniques of Disavowal

2021 ◽  
pp. 159-191
Author(s):  
Erin R. Pineda
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Public Memory ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
Moral Standing ◽  
World's Fair ◽  
The South ◽  
Black Activism ◽  
The Public ◽  
The One

This chapter considers the limitations of civil rights disobedience in transforming white citizens. Building on the work of James Baldwin, Charles Mills, and Elizabeth Spelman and chronicling a “failed” protest at the 1964 World’s Fair, this chapter attends to the discursive techniques of disavowal that white citizens and state officials used to dismiss black activism as inappropriate, irresponsible, gratuitous, and violent—thereby avoiding the claims such protest made upon them, while preserving their own innocence and moral standing. In stepping outside the South and the familiar set of events that make up the public memory of the “short” civil rights movement, this chapter also suggests that some aspects of campaigns like the one in Birmingham were enabled—and publicly legitimated—by the very techniques of disavowal that limited the movement’s radical potentialities.

scholarly journals Trends in James Baldwin Criticism 2001–10

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 168-196
Author(s):  
Lynn Orilla Scott
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
Numerous Book ◽  
Four Books ◽  
New Material ◽  
Black Queer

James Baldwin criticism from 2001 through 2010 is marked by an increased appreciation for Baldwin’s entire oeuvre including his writing after the mid 1960s. The question of his artistic decline remains debated, but more scholars find a greater consistency and power in Baldwin’s later work than previous scholars had found. A group of dedicated Baldwin scholars emerged during this period and have continued to host regular international conferences. The application of new and diverse critical lenses—including cultural studies, political theory, religious studies, and black queer theory—contributed to more complex readings of Baldwin’s texts. Historical and legal approaches re-assessed Baldwin’s relationship to the Civil Rights and Black Power movements and new material emerged on Baldwin’s decade in Turkey. Some historical perspective gave many critics a more nuanced approach to the old “art” vs. “politics” debate as it surfaced in Baldwin’s initial reception, many now finding Baldwin’s “angry” work to be more “relevant” than “out of touch” as it was thought of during his lifetime. In the first decade of the new millennium, three books of new primary source material, a new biography, four books of literary criticism, three edited collections of critical essays, two special issues of journals and numerous book chapters and articles were published, marking a significant increase not only in the quantity, but the quality of Baldwin criticism.

scholarly journals Baldwin This Time

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-128
Author(s):  
Bill V. Mullen
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Third World ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
State Violence ◽  
The South ◽  
Psychological Vulnerability ◽  
In Fire ◽  
The U.S

This excerpt from James Baldwin: Living in Fire details a key juncture in Baldwin’s life, 1957–59, when he was transformed by a visit to the South to write about the civil rights movement while grappling with the meaning of the Algerian Revolution. The excerpt shows Baldwin understanding black and Arab liberation struggles as simultaneous and parallel moments in the rise of Third World, anti-colonial and anti-racist U.S. politics. It also shows Baldwin’s emotional and psychological vulnerability to repressive state violence experienced by black and Arab citizens in the U.S., France, and Algiers.

Scenes of Argument

PMLA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 135 (5) ◽  
pp. 995-1001
Author(s):  
Nijah Cunningham
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Short Story ◽  
The Political ◽  
Black Artists ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Political Message

In a crucial moment from Henry Dumas's short story “strike and fade” (C. 1965-68), an unnamed narrator observes what is left of a city in the immediate aftermath of an urban uprising: “The word is out. Cool it. We on the street, see. Me and Big Skin. We watch the cops. They watch us. People comin and goin. That fire truck still wrecked up side the buildin. Papers say we riot, but we didn't riot. We like the VC, the Viet Cong. We strike and fade” (111). The staccato established by the short phrasings, fragments, and use of the vernacular evokes a sense of anxiety, contributing to what Carter Mathes aptly describes as Dumas's “aural portrait of black urban space under siege” (91). Dumas's careful attunement to the rhythmic feelings, or grooves, of the everyday adds texture to that opening pronouncement, “The word is out,” which, in this instance, registers a temperate disposition simultaneously alert and giving off the impression that one is maintaining the order of things. Everything will have changed by the time the phrase returns in the short story's penultimate paragraph, when the narrator and Big Skin are no longer eyeing the police but are instead woven into the collective action of an indeterminate “we.” Dumas writes, “The word is out. Burn, baby, burn. We on the scene. The brothers. Together. Cops and people goin and comin. Some people got good loot, some just hoofin it. A police cordon comin. We shadows on the wall. Light comin towards us. We fade” (115). The political message seems obvious. It's the post-Watts 1960s and disenchantment with the civil rights movement is setting in. For an emerging generation of radical black artists and activists, the time has come for people to . . . confer on the possibility of Blackness and the inevitability of Revolution. (Giovanni)

Community-Based, Civic Unionism during the Height of the Civil Rights Era

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Racial Equality ◽  
The Political ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Cheap Labor ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
District 65

This concluding chapter examines the changed role labor unions, especially those on the left end of the political spectrum, took during the civil rights era—having gone from leading the fight for racial equality to immersing the contest for better jobs into the larger civil rights movement that was underway. The NAACP, the CIO, the NNLC, and District 65/DPO may have agreed on the basic fundamentals of racial equality but they certainly did not agree on how to achieve it. Local 65's version of community-based, civic unionism, one that was designed to confront the discriminatory manifestations of the capitalist, “for-profit” system, was subsumed into the larger civil rights-era struggles. The overt capitalist critique all but vanished, and for low-wage workers, that critique was what rendered their existence as part of the never ending supply of cheap labor visible.

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