I wanted to be able to come here and speak with you on this occasion because you are young, gifted and black. ... I, for one, can think of no more dynamic combination that a person might be. ... And that is why I say to you that, though it be a thrilling and marvelous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times,…
For many of us with ties to the city of Atlanta, the name Wayne Williams evokes memories. While I was too young and too far away at the time to be directly affected by the Atlanta Child Murders—a name given to the rash of murders of black children from many of Atlanta’s impoverished communities from 1979 to 1981—the…
Last night, the Yara Shahidi-led vehicle Grown-ish debuted. For those not in the know, it’s a spinoff from hit ABC show Black-ish that focuses on Shahidi’s character, Zoey, and her journey from super-sheltered private school student to college freshman in this millennial world. Comparisons to A Different World will…
Today marks 30 years since James Baldwin’s passing, and America seems to be as ignorant of its inherent racism as it was when Baldwin was writing and being an all-around brilliant man, scholar and activist. Sometimes I like to imagine a James Baldwin fan fiction of what he’d be doing today if he were still alive.
After his history-making turn directing Moonlight, Barry Jenkins has chosen to tackle the work of one of America’s great literary icons: James Baldwin.
Barry Jenkins, director of the Oscar-winning feature film Moonlight, has plans to bring more black excellence to the screen in the form of a screen adaptation of If Beale Street Could Talk, a novel by celebrated author James Baldwin.
There’s a line in the Smiths’ “Unloveable” that goes, “I wear black on the outside/’cause black is how I feel on the inside.” Morrissey, the Smiths’ former lead singer, decided to take his love of that line, as well as an image of James Baldwin, to make T-shirts to sell on his North American tour.
James Baldwin is unequivocally one of the most prolific writers of his time.
Black women have never labored under the assumption that all womanhood is created equal in a white supremacist society.
In the late 1970s, James Baldwin began working on an idea for a book that would tell the story of America through the lives of three of his murdered friends: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
James Baldwin is directly connected to Duke Ellington and John Coltrane in my mind, thanks to the 90-minute documentary James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket. When the Paris section of the film starts, you see mid-20th-century black-and-white footage of a security guard opening huge iron gates that lead to the Eiffel…
As a book-loving Black literary homothug who writes openly about life, sexuality, society, and the innumerable consequences and byproducts of White Terribleness and the absence of Teen Summit on post-Y2K childhood development (hint: they’re doomed), Sir James Baldwin has always occupied a peculiar space in my world.…
