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| This Day in Gay History | |||||||||||
August 02Born 
1924 -
JAMES BALDWIN, American author, born (d. 1987); One of the most important social commentators in the United States, most of Baldwin's work deals with racial and sexual issues in the mid-20th century in the U.S.. This year marks the centenary of his birth. His novels are notable for the personal way in which they explore questions of identity as well as the way in which they mine complex social and psychological pressures related to being black and gay well before the social, cultural or political equality of these groups was improved. One source of support came from an admired older writer Richard Wright, whom he called "the greatest black writer in the world." Wright and Baldwin became friends for a short time and Wright helped him to secure the Eugene F. Saxon Memorial Award. Baldwin titled a collection of essays Notes Of A Native Son, in clear reference to Wright's novel Native Son. However, Baldwin's 1949 essay "Everybody's Protest Novel" ended the two authors' friendship because Baldwin asserted that Wright's novel Native Son, like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin lacked credible characters and psychological complexity. However, during an interview with Julius Lester. Baldwin explained that his adoration for Wright remained: "I knew Richard and I loved him. I was not attacking him; I was trying to clarify something for myself." This was also the year he met and fell in love with Lucien Happersberger. The boy was a seventeen-year-old runaway, and the two became very close, until Happersberger's marriage three years later, an event that left Baldwin devastated. James Baldwin is one of the most celebrated American writers of the 20th century. He wrote novels, essays, short stories, poetry, and even a screenplay. He's best known for his affecting prose, his depth of thought, and his clear moral vision for the country. He was also a bit of a character. In interviews he's often smoking a cigarette with his legs crossed, casually calling the interviewer "baby" with a big toothy grin. Baldwin is perhaps best known for his philosophies on race. And as an openly gay man, Baldwin also spoke about sexuality in a time when it was unheard of for many Black men to do so. Now, some 40 years after his death, much of what he had to say about America continues to resonate. Baldwin's
writings of the 1970s and 1980s were largely overlooked by critics,
although they have received increasing attention in recent years. Several of his essays and interviews of the 1980s discuss homosexuality and At the time of Baldwin's death, he was working on an unfinished manuscript called Remember This House, a memoir of his personal recollections of civil rights leaders Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Following his death, publishing company McGraw-Hill took the unprecedented step of suing his estate to recover the $200,000 advance they had paid him for the book, although the lawsuit was dropped by 1990. The manuscript forms the basis for Raoul Peck's 2016 documentary film I Am Not Your Negro.
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