Author..Activist..Preacher...Playwright
August 2, 1924 - November 30, 1987
James Arthur Baldwin was born in Harlem in 1924. Born out of wedlock, he never knew his real father and was raised by a step-father who, ironically, was both an abusive father and a minister. One of nine children, in a family filled with strife and great poverty, Baldwin became his own man at an early age. Pushed into "store-front" preaching by his step-father, at 14, Baldwin did in fact preach at the Fireside Pentecostal Church in Harlem. Eloquent in the pulpit, his oratory skills came naturally, if not divinely. It was here he gained the confidence he needed to succeed, the confidence to break away, to escape, to be himself. After high school, Baldwin did escape in a sense, at least from his father's harshness, but not yet the world's.