If he were still with us, this year the writer and activist James Baldwin would be 100 years old. Rarely does anyone’s legacy age so well. Decades after his death, his work still has a precision and intimacy that all but summon him, his humor, his passion, and intellect into the room. It is why filmmaker Raoul Peck could make an Oscar-nominated documentary, “I Am Not Your Negro” (2017), using Baldwin’s words. After “Moonlight” (2016) won the Academy Award for Best Picture, director Barry Jenkins could have done just about anything. But he used that cachet to adapt Baldwin’s novel “If Beale Street Could Talk.”
Baldwin still talks to us--in print, on film, his face and quotes on t-shirts and posters--about how to be humane and how to come to terms with how much we need one another. He is saintly. I was once gifted a candle with his image, a yellow-orange sun burning around his head, from the Unemployed Philosopher Guild’s Secular Saint Candle line. People don’t just want to read him but in challenging times wish that they--and others--could emulate Baldwin. That impetus inspired, for example, “Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own” (Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., 2020).
Baldwin is passion without sentimentality. Intellectual clarity without cruelty. Love that embraces the full ugly-beautiful breadth of human experience. He speaks to people and the practices and institutions we create that can destroy us. He was Black and queer when both things could be even deadlier than they are today. And he gave voice to all of it.
How do we honor such a figure?
Baldwin calls us to listen to, confront, and comfort the broken places within us and help others to do the same. It is interior, deeply personal work that shows up in how we show up, that changes everything with which we come into contact, and whose greatest proof is in how we interact.
Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke from a mountaintop. He had to shock an entire nation and its guilty, dead forefathers into action. Baldwin is eloquent but always conversational, personal, his essays the finest letters one could ever receive for an audience of exactly one person: you. To read him is to undergo open-heart surgery one paragraph at a time.
Here are ideas for honoring James Baldwin this year.
Read something by Baldwin and share it.
I especially love his “Collected Essays,” edited by Toni Morrison. Open to any page. You can’t go wrong.
Have a Baldwinesque conversation with someone you love--or with a total stranger.
The Baldwin Prize is a scholarship and essay competition that asks high school students to listen and reflect the way Baldwin did. But you don’t have to participate in the competition to have an eye-opening exchange. Use this year’s Baldwin Prize prompt to spark a deeper conversation with someone you love, admire, or just want to get to know better.
Ask your elected officials to pass a proclamation in Baldwin’s honor.
Sample language for such a proclamation is here and below. You can find your US elected officials at every level of government here.
We hereby recognize 2024 as the James Baldwin Centennial in honor of James Arthur Baldwin, American writer and civil rights advocate born on August 2, 1924. We honor Baldwin, who in his work and in his life asked America and its people to live out their finest ideals. We honor Baldwin because he helped Black people, queer people, the marginalized, the ignored, the lonely, those who needed to be seen and see in that reflection love: He helped everyone. We honor Baldwin because there are few better examples of citizenship, of neighborliness, of humanity demanding and inspiring full expression. We are better because of his example.
Ask the organizations with which you are affiliated to share a statement honoring Baldwin, e.g., on their website or social media.
They can also start with the language above and add to or modify it as needed. Suggestions are here.
And spread the word using the hashtag #Baldwin100.
2024 is a busy, cacophonous year. Reflecting on Baldwin can help.
Photo credit: Allan Warren. CC BY-SA 3.0.
Baldwin still talks to us--in print, on film, his face and quotes on t-shirts and posters--about how to be humane and how to come to terms with how much we need one another. He is saintly. I was once gifted a candle with his image, a yellow-orange sun burning around his head, from the Unemployed Philosopher Guild’s Secular Saint Candle line. People don’t just want to read him but in challenging times wish that they--and others--could emulate Baldwin. That impetus inspired, for example, “Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own” (Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., 2020).
Baldwin is passion without sentimentality. Intellectual clarity without cruelty. Love that embraces the full ugly-beautiful breadth of human experience. He speaks to people and the practices and institutions we create that can destroy us. He was Black and queer when both things could be even deadlier than they are today. And he gave voice to all of it.
How do we honor such a figure?
Baldwin calls us to listen to, confront, and comfort the broken places within us and help others to do the same. It is interior, deeply personal work that shows up in how we show up, that changes everything with which we come into contact, and whose greatest proof is in how we interact.
Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke from a mountaintop. He had to shock an entire nation and its guilty, dead forefathers into action. Baldwin is eloquent but always conversational, personal, his essays the finest letters one could ever receive for an audience of exactly one person: you. To read him is to undergo open-heart surgery one paragraph at a time.
Here are ideas for honoring James Baldwin this year.
Read something by Baldwin and share it.
I especially love his “Collected Essays,” edited by Toni Morrison. Open to any page. You can’t go wrong.
Have a Baldwinesque conversation with someone you love--or with a total stranger.
The Baldwin Prize is a scholarship and essay competition that asks high school students to listen and reflect the way Baldwin did. But you don’t have to participate in the competition to have an eye-opening exchange. Use this year’s Baldwin Prize prompt to spark a deeper conversation with someone you love, admire, or just want to get to know better.
Ask your elected officials to pass a proclamation in Baldwin’s honor.
Sample language for such a proclamation is here and below. You can find your US elected officials at every level of government here.
We hereby recognize 2024 as the James Baldwin Centennial in honor of James Arthur Baldwin, American writer and civil rights advocate born on August 2, 1924. We honor Baldwin, who in his work and in his life asked America and its people to live out their finest ideals. We honor Baldwin because he helped Black people, queer people, the marginalized, the ignored, the lonely, those who needed to be seen and see in that reflection love: He helped everyone. We honor Baldwin because there are few better examples of citizenship, of neighborliness, of humanity demanding and inspiring full expression. We are better because of his example.
Ask the organizations with which you are affiliated to share a statement honoring Baldwin, e.g., on their website or social media.
They can also start with the language above and add to or modify it as needed. Suggestions are here.
And spread the word using the hashtag #Baldwin100.
2024 is a busy, cacophonous year. Reflecting on Baldwin can help.
Photo credit: Allan Warren. CC BY-SA 3.0.
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