SYMHC Classics: James Baldwin

Summary

Stuff You Missed in History Class: SYMHC Classics – James Baldwin

Published on August 2, 2025 by iHeartPodcasts

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Introduction

In this episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class, hosts Tracy V. Wilson and Holly Fry delve into the life and legacy of the influential writer and civil rights activist, James Baldwin. Originally recorded in June 2020 amidst the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, the discussion underscores Baldwin's enduring relevance in contemporary discourse on race and identity.

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Early Life and Background

James Baldwin was born James Arthur Jones in Harlem, New York, on August 2, 1924. Tracy shares, "James Baldwin was born Aug. 2, 1924, or 101 years ago today on the day this episode is coming. So he is today's Saturday classic." [02:21]

His mother, Emma Burtis Jones, was an unmarried domestic worker who never revealed Baldwin's biological father's identity. At age three, Emma married David Baldwin, a factory worker and evangelical minister, and together they had eight children. The family lived in poverty in an area Baldwin later referred to as "junkies hollow" during the Great Depression ([05:05]).

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Education and Early Career

Baldwin's upbringing was marred by his strict and abusive stepfather, who often demeaned him and his siblings. "David Baldwin was strict, unyielding, authoritarian, and cruel," Holly notes ([05:43]). Despite these challenges, Baldwin found solace in reading, claiming to have read every volume in Harlem's library and later frequenting the New York Public Library on 42nd Street ([06:58]).

He attended several public schools, including PS24—led by New York City's first Black principal, Gertrude Ayers—and Frederick Douglass Junior High School, where Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen was his French teacher ([07:17]). Baldwin excelled in English and history but struggled with other subjects, compounded by personal turmoil over his sexuality and religious beliefs ([08:12]).

After graduating high school in 1942, Baldwin aspired to attend the City College of New York but could not afford the tuition. Instead, he took a job in the defense industry in Belmead, New Jersey, where he first encountered overt racism, leading to repeated harassment and eventual dismissal ([09:15]).

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Move to Paris and Expatriate Life

Trauma and persistent racism drove Baldwin to leave the United States for Paris at the age of 24 on November 11, 1948 ([16:06]). In Paris, he sought refuge from America's systemic racism, stating, "I had no idea what might happen to me in France, but I was very clear what would happen if I remained in New York." ([17:07])

In Paris, Baldwin formed a long-term relationship with Lucien Habersberger, a Swiss artist, who became a significant influence on his life and work ([17:39]). During this period, Baldwin wrote "Go Tell It on the Mountain", "The Amen Corner", and numerous essays, reflecting on his identity and sexuality ([19:10]).

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Literary Contributions

Baldwin's work critically examined race, sexuality, and American society. In his essay collection "The Fire Next Time" (1963), he juxtaposed personal narratives with incisive social critique, arguing that racism dehumanizes both Black and white Americans. Tracy highlights, "His 1963 book 'The Fire Next Time' is frequently on anti-racism reading lists." ([05:05])

Baldwin also penned "Another Country" (1958), exploring interracial relationships and the complexities of Black and white interactions in America. Literary critic Fred Stanley praised the novel for its bold exploration of taboo subjects ([20:23]).

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Civil Rights Activism

Although not serving as the movement's spokesperson, Baldwin actively participated in the Civil Rights Movement. He aligned at times with Martin Luther King Jr.'s nonviolent approach and later found resonance with the Black Power Movement's call for immediate change. "Baldwin increasingly favored the Black Power movement's focus on immediate radical change instead of nonviolent incremental progress," Holly observes ([21:19]).

In 1963, Baldwin authored "The Fire Next Time", which spent over 40 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. The book's powerful essays addressed religion, race, and personal identity, influencing both activists and the broader public ([22:33]).

A pivotal moment in Baldwin's activism was his meeting with Robert F. Kennedy in May 1963. Baldwin criticized the government's tepid response to civil rights, labeling it "moral treason," which eventually influenced Kennedy to address civil rights in his June 1963 speech ([23:04], [23:43]). However, the meeting strained Baldwin's relationship with the government, leading to FBI surveillance ([24:17]).

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Later Life and Shifting Perspectives

By the late 1960s, Baldwin's views had grown more radical, reflecting his disillusionment with the slow pace of change. He supported initiatives like the Black Panther Party's social programs but opposed their separatist tendencies ([30:58]).

Baldwin faced criticism from various fronts:

• White literary reviewers accused him of an overly confrontational style.
• Black literary circles felt his work catered too much to white audiences.
• The Black Power Movement criticized his sexual orientation and integrationist stance.
• His advocacy for Palestinian liberation was labeled anti-Semitic by some, despite his condemnation of anti-Semitism within Black activism.

In response to mounting pressures, Baldwin returned to France in 1970, purchasing a farmhouse in St. Paul de Vence, which became his permanent residence ([32:36]).

During this period, Baldwin expanded his focus to include gender roles and sexuality, influenced by conversations with poets like Nikki Giovanni and Audre Lorde ([33:25]). He remained somewhat detached from the burgeoning gay rights movement, expressing uncertainty about categorizing his own sexual identity ([33:52]).

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Final Years and Legacy

Baldwin continued to write, teach, and travel until his health declined in the late 1980s. Suffering from hepatitis, liver damage, heart attacks, and ultimately esophageal cancer, Baldwin passed away on December 1, 1987, at the age of 63 ([34:28]).

His funeral at the Church of St. John the Divine in Manhattan was attended by 5,000 people, with tributes from notable figures like Amiri Baraka, Maya Angelou, and Toni Morrison. Morrison eloquently stated, "In your hands, language was handsome... neither bloodless nor bloody and yet alive." ([35:34])

Baldwin authored 22 books, including six novels, and was an esteemed member of various literary and civil rights organizations. Although his popularity waned towards the end of his life, the resurgence of interest in his work, fueled by movements like Black Lives Matter and adaptations such as "If Beale Street Could Talk" (2018), reaffirmed his significance ([36:49]).

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Enduring Relevance

James Baldwin's incisive exploration of race, sexuality, and identity continues to resonate today. As Tracy aptly summarizes, "James Baldwin's work is frequently part of anti-racism courses and reading lists," highlighting his lasting impact on social justice and literature ([37:27]).

Notable Quotes:

• "Everything now we must assume is in our hands. We have no right to assume otherwise." — Tracy V. Wilson ([37:27])
• "I'm optimistic about the future, but not about the future of this civilization. I'm optimistic about the civilization which will replace this one." — James Baldwin ([38:10])

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Conclusion

James Baldwin's life was a testament to resilience, intellect, and unwavering commitment to social justice. Through his literary genius and activism, he illuminated the intricate dynamics of race and identity in America, leaving an indelible mark that continues to inspire and provoke critical thought.

For more insights into historical figures and events, subscribe to Stuff You Missed in History Class on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or your preferred podcast platform.

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References:

• Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time.
• Baldwin, James. Another Country.
• Interviews and speeches by James Baldwin.

Transcript

[Tracy V. Wilson]

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

Well, it really depends on who you talk to. There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond and.

[Holly Fry]

Left a woman behind to drown.

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The iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

You get your podcast. Happy Saturday. James Baldwin was born Aug. 2, 1924, or 101 years ago today on the day this episode is coming. So he is today's Saturday classic.

[Holly Fry]

This episode originally came out on June 17, 2020. So we recorded it in the immediate aftermath of the murder of George Floyd that May. Baldwin's writing and work felt deeply relevant in that moment, and that continues to be true today. Welcome to Stuff youf Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

[Holly Fry]

And I'm Holly Fry.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The last thing we recorded before I got to work on today's episode was our June 5th behind the scenes. And if you've listened to that, I was clearly having a hard time figuring out what to do next. And when I remembered that I'd had James Baldwin on my list for a while, my inward response was like, yes, obviously, James Baldwin, of course. Why didn't you even think of this before? This description by Juan Williams in a piece called Baldwin the Witness's Testament, which was published in the Washington Post the day after Baldwin's death in 1987, illustrates why I had that response. Quote, Given the messy nature of racial hatred, of the half truths, blasphemies and lies that make up American life, Baldwin's accuracy in reproducing that world stands as a remarkable achievement. His accuracy was key in his works. The reader could resonate to the sounds of the street corner, as drawn by Baldwin could feel the anger of black Americans so long denied a role in American life. As Baldwin wrote about that anger, black people reading Baldwin knew he wrote the truth. White people reading Baldwin sensed his truth about the lives of black people and the sins of of a racist nation. Interest in James Baldwin's work has just really grown in the United States over the last several years in conjunction with the Black Lives matter movement. His 1963 book the Fire Next Time is frequently on anti racism reading lists. Sometimes it's paired up with Ta Nehisi Coates, between the World and Me, which was inspired by it or with the Fire. This time A New Generation Speaks about Race. That's a book that came out in 2016. Basically, James Baldwin was a brilliant essayist and one of the chroniclers of the civil rights movement and a really powerful voice against racism. And that is why we are talking about him today.

[Holly Fry]

So we're going to start with his background. James Baldwin was born James Arthur Jones in Harlem, New York on August 2, 1924. His mother was Emma Burtis Jones and she was a domestic worker. When James was born, Emma was not married and she never told him who his biological father was.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

When James was three, his mother Married David Baldwin, who was a factory worker and an evangelical minister, and they went on to have eight children together. The family was really poor. They were living in a part of Harlem that Baldwin later called junkies hollow. And part of James's early years also took place during the great depression.

[Holly Fry]

David Baldwin was strict, unyielding, authoritarian, and cruel, including telling James that he was ugly and reminding him of the circumstances of his birthday. And, of course, that was heavily stigmatized at the time. As an adult, Baldwin described the whole household constantly working to appease his stepfather. James also said David taught him to fight because he had to continually fight back with patience and a kind of ruthless determination, because I had to endure it, to go under and come back up to wait.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

James Baldwin attributed his stepfather's treatment of him and his mother and siblings as being the product of living as a proud man in a racist society where he just could not make enough money to really support his family. And Baldwin also credited his younger siblings as being a big part of what kept him off the streets and largely out of trouble. In his youth, as the oldest, James was always helping to look after the younger ones, and that was something he described doing with a book in one hand, because reading became one of his biggest means of escape. He liked to tell people that he read every volume in Harlem's library branches and that he had to go to the New York public library on 42nd street to find any books that he hadn't read yet.

[Holly Fry]

He also credited religion with helping to keep him out of trouble. He had a religious conversion experience at the age of 14 and became a youth minister at Fireside Pentecostal Assembly. He was a youth minister for three years, and during that time, he crafted his use of language and his speaking style.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Throughout all this, James had been attending New York public schools, first at PS24, whose principal was Gertrude Ayers. That was the first black principal in New York City. From there, he moved to Frederick Douglass junior High School, where Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen was his French teacher and the director of the school's literary club. While at Frederick Douglass junior High, James was editor of the school's newspaper, the Douglass Pilot, and also tried to make money to help the family by shining shoes and selling shopping bags.

[Holly Fry]

For high school, James was selected to attend DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. This was one of New York's more elite schools with a predominantly Jewish student body. There, James again worked on the school newspaper, the Magpie, and he excelled in his English and history courses. He also met painter Buford Delaney who became a friend and something of a mentor as he demonstrated for Baldwin that a black man could become an artist.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

James didn't do nearly as well in his other courses as he did in English and history. And his high school years were personally very turbulent. In addition to all the stresses of his home life, he had started to question his sexuality. He'd also started questioning the church as he began to learn about the ways that Christianity had been used as a weapon during slavery, and as he heard people within his church and his stepfather make anti Semitic comments, He ultimately left the church in 1941.

[Holly Fry]

James Baldwin graduated from high school in 1942, six months after the rest of his class. The internal turmoil connected to his faith and his sexuality contributed to a mental health crisis that derailed his studies. He had hoped to go to the City College of New York, but he couldn't afford a tuition. Instead, he got a defense industry job in Belmead, New Jersey to try to help support his family financially. By this point, James's stepfather was struggling with his own mental health, with symptoms that included depression and paranoia.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Baldwin's job in Bell Meade involved building a new army quartermaster depot, and it was Baldwin's first real experience with overt racism on the job. The U.S. army was still segregated, and Baldwin continued to act the way he had acted back in Harlem when he was around white southern service members. And they, of course, expected him to be totally differential to them and to stay out of their way.

[Holly Fry]

Of course, racism had existed in Harlem as well, but this was a whole different set of social expectations and consequences. Baldwin described this experience as learning what it meant to be a Negro.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

He.

[Holly Fry]

He refused to back down in the face of racism and harassment on the job, and he was fired. A friend helped him get his job back, and when the harassment resumed, he again pushed back against it and was once again fired.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

On his last night in Belmead, Baldwin and some friends were refused service at a diner because of their race. And Baldwin really reached a breaking point. He threw a water pitcher, and that shattered the mirror behind the bar. He described this moment as revelatory, realizing that he had been angry enough to kill someone and that his own life was in danger. In his words, quote from the hatred I carried in my own heart.

[Holly Fry]

David Baldwin Sr. Died on July 29, 1943, which was also the day James's youngest sibling, Paula Maria, was born. Two days later, on August 1, an uprising swept through Harlem. It was sparked when a black soldier tried to intervene as a white police officer was trying to arrest a black woman. The officer shot the soldier and rumors spread that he had been killed. This was one of a series of similar riots that took place in cities around the United States in 1943. And in Harlem, six black people were killed as thousands of police were dispatched in response to the violence.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Baldwin really felt like living in Harlem had become untenable. And he moved to Greenwich Village to try to make a living as a writer while also waiting tables and other work just to try to make ends meet and to send what money he could back to his family. He had relationships with men and with women and at one point became engaged to a woman, but ultimately broke off that engagement.

[Holly Fry]

He also became friends with a man named Eugene Worth, who encouraged Baldwin to join the Young People Socialist League. Although it's not entirely clear how long Baldwin was involved or exactly what his involvement even was, in the years just after World War II, he spent at least some time with various political groups that were connected to things like socialism, communism and labor rights. But he didn't become exclusively focused on any of them or in some cases ever officially become a member.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, one of the biographies that I read of him characterizes period as kind of bouncing around from one group to another, getting a sense of what different ideas were, but not really committing to any of them at that point. In 1944, Baldwin met Richard Wright, who helped him get Harper's Eugene F. Saxton Fellowship. And that fellowship provided some of the funding to help him launch a literary career. He started getting published in established magazines. But then in 1946, Eugene Worth died by suicide. That was something that traumatized and haunted Baldwin for the rest of his life.

[Holly Fry]

Two years later, Baldwin had become certain that he could not live in the United States anymore. It circled back to what he had realized. That last night in Belmead, he had a clear minded certainty that if he didn't leave the US in its systematic racism and oppression, he would be killed or he would kill someone. He finally decided to go to France at the age of 24.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

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Episodes on James Bond, special effects, stunt men and women, disaster films, even movies that change filmmaking and many more. Listen to the Stuff you should Know Summer Movie Playlist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. James Baldwin left for Paris on November 11, 1948, using the last of the money from a fellowship to pay for a one way ticket by sea. Beyond that, he had almost no money, virtually no connections and nowhere to stay. He also did not speak French. In his words quote I had no idea what might happen to me in France, but I was very clear what would happen if I remained in New York.

[Holly Fry]

Baldwin faced some criticism for leaving the US with people arguing that he was abandoning a country that he should have stayed in and tried to help fix. But this first stretch of time in Paris was critically important to his work and identity as a writer. Unlike many of the other writers and artists who left the US For Paris, he didn't think of himself as an expatriate but more as a commuter. He still felt a deep connection to the United States, and he made frequent trips back, and he spent long stretches of time in other parts of the world, including Istanbul.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Shortly after arriving in Paris, Baldwin met Swiss artist Lucien Habersberger, who was white, bisexual and at one point married to a woman. When they met, Baldwin was 24 and Happpersberger was 17. They eventually started a relationship that went on for almost 40 years. Baldwin described Habersberger as the love of his life, and he became godfather to Habersberger's children. Along with other relationships in his life, Habersberger was one of the inspirations for Baldwin's novel Giovanni's Room.

[Holly Fry]

While in France, Baldwin wrote Everybody's Protest Novel, which argued that political novels like Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Richard Wright's Native Son were reinforcing stereotypes about black people and in particular, dehumanizing black men. Although Wright had helped Baldwin secure his first writing fellowship, the two men did not see eye to eye on a number of issues, and they frequently criticized one another.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

On December 19, 1949, Baldwin was arrested for being in receipt of stolen property after he borrowed a bed sheet that a friend had stolen from a hotel. This whole Experience led him to think about identity and policing in the United States versus in France. The police in France saw him as an American, while police in New York would have seen him as an inherently criminal problem. But he also became aware that most of the people who were in jail with him in Paris were from Northern Africa, and that French colonialism had its own part to play in racism in France.

[Holly Fry]

This first stretch of time in France let Baldwin look back on the US from a distance, seeing things from angles that just were not possible for him. While he was living in it, he started coming to terms with both his own history and with his sexuality. While living in France and Switzerland, he finished his semi autobiographical novel Go Tell it on the Mountain, which he had actually started writing in high school, as well as a play called the Amen Corner and a series of essays.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In 1952, Baldwin made a trip back to the US with financial help from Marlon Brando. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in June of 1954 and other fellowships followed. In 1959, he was awarded a Ford foundation grant to work on the novel Another Country. And this novel included a fictionalized depiction of his friendship with Eugene Worth, including Worth's suicide. Professor and literary critic Fred Stanley later wrote of Another country, quote, Baldwin has been audacious enough prior to most other artists, artists to grapple candidly with the usually taboo subjects of American society and culture. Interracial sexual intercourse, homosexuality as a normative mode of experience and bisexuality as a real phenomenon.

[Holly Fry]

After some more back and forth travel, Baldwin returned to the US for a longer stretch starting in July of 1957. A lot of his written work during this time documents or reflects on the Civil Rights movement, a movement that he wasn't really sure how he fit into. He had become well known and well established as a writer by this point, and while he did not want to describe himself as the movement's spokesperson, there were definitely people who thought of him that way.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

As the Civil Rights movement grew and evolved, Baldwin found himself aligned in some ways with Martin Luther King Jr's approach through non violent action, then in other ways with Malcolm X, the Nation of Islam and the Black Power Movement. For example, as time went on, Baldwin increasingly favored the Black Power movement's focus on immediate radical change instead of non violent incremental progress. But he really did not agree with the Black Power movement's focus on black separatism.

[Holly Fry]

One hallmark of Baldwin's writing during the Civil Rights movement was that it was accessible to and sometimes written specifically for a white audience. Much of this written work carried an implicit or explicit warning that racism was not just harming black people, that it was also destroying white people as well. Some of it has also been described as prophetic, foreseeing that the movement would become more militant if nonviolent activism did not meet its goals, and foreseeing that white activism would turn away from that militancy.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Baldwin's work in the movement was not just about writing, though. He also made speeches. He donated money, wrote letters, signed petitions organized during the lunch counter sit ins that we talked about on the show. Earlier this year, James Baldwin traveled to Tallahassee to interview student demonstrators. In 1961, he became a sponsor for the National Committee for Insane Nuclear Policy, and he also helped sponsor a rally to disband the House UN American Activities Committee. In 1963, he took a speaking tour through the south in conjunction with the Congress of Racial Equality. During this tour he met and started working with civil rights activist and NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers.

[Holly Fry]

Baldwin's book the Fire Next Time came out during this tour as well. It contains two essays, My Dungeon Letter to My nephew on the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation and Down at the Cross Letter from a Region of My Mind. The latter essay dwells on Baldwin's experiences with religion, including both Christianity and the Nation of Islamic, relating them to race and racism, and reflecting on his own beliefs. The Fire Next Time spent more than 40 weeks in the top five of the New York Times bestseller list.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

On May 17, 1963, during Martin Luther King Jr's Birmingham campaign, Baldwin was on the COVID of Time magazine under a banner that read Birmingham and Beyond the Negro Push for Equality. A few days before that Time magazine cover, Baldwin had sent a telegram to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy criticizing the United States lack of response to the civil rights movement, especially in the face of increasing violence and brutality against the people who were participating in that movement. Baldwin framed this inaction and the failure of the nation to make black liberation a priority as a moral treason.

[Holly Fry]

The result was that Kennedy met with Baldwin for breakfast on May 23, asking him to gather writers and activists to meet with him. The next day they met in Kennedy's apartment in New York, where Kennedy was joined by Department of Justice lawyer Burke Marshall. Baldwin had brought his brother David, as well as Harry Belafonte, Lorraine Hansberry, Lena Horn, and Rip Torn, along with representatives from the Chicago Urban League, Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited, the naacp, and core. Clarence Benjamin Jones, who is one of Martin Luther King Jr. S advisors, was.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Also there, but Kennedy's goal for this meeting was not so much to get a sense of what black Americans needed or what the civil rights movement's goals were or how the government might incorporate those goals. He was more focused on figuring out who among them might serve as sort of a mouthpiece for the government, promoting the government's policies to the black community to improve race relations, and also on outlining what the government had done already so far to the assembled group while basically asking for their patience.

[Holly Fry]

This meeting, consequently, did not go well. Baldwin and the other assembled activists were trying to describe the systemic racism that went well beyond what was encoded in law. While Kennedy was talking about how his own family had been oppressed for being Irish, Kennedy came off as deeply naive and unwilling to listen. Eventually, Lorraine Hansberry walked out and several others followed. Afterward, the FBI started monitoring Baldwin, placing him on its security index of potentially dangerous people and amassing a file on him that was more than 1700 pages long.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This meeting, though while not immediately successful, is often credited with starting to shift Robert Kennedy's perspectives, leading him to encourage his brother, President John F. Kennedy, to address the nation on the subject of civil rights. Kennedy gave his civil rights address on June 11, 1963.

[Holly Fry]

In the early morning hours of June 12, Medgar Evers was assassinated in his driveway in front of his children. The culprit was Byron Della Beckwith, who was found guilty of the crime more than 30 years later.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Baldwin continued his writing and work during the 1960s, but the assassination of Medgar Evers was the first of a series of events that sort of shifted his work and his outlook. Others included the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963, as well as the assassinations of two other men that he had known and worked with, Malcolm X in 1965 and Martin Luther King Jr. In 1968.

[Holly Fry]

And we're going to get to more on that after we first have a sponsor break.

[Danielle Robaix]

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

A foot washed up, a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was.

[Danielle Robaix]

Most everything was burned up pretty good.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

From the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable.

[Danielle Robaix]

These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA using new scientific tools. They're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it.

[Holly Fry]

He never thought he was going to get caught.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And I just looked at my computer screen, I was just like, ah, gotcha.

[Danielle Robaix]

On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at othram, the Houston lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Kelly Harnett]

Kelly Harnett spent over a decade in prison for a murder she says she didn't commit.

[Danielle Robaix]

I'm 100% innocent.

[Kelly Harnett]

While behind bars, she learned the law from scratch. He goes, oh, God.

[Danielle Robaix]

Harnett jailhouse lawyer.

[Kelly Harnett]

And as she fought for herself, she also became a lifeline for the women locked up alongside her. You're supposed to have your faith in.

[Holly Fry]

God, but I had nothing but faith in her.

[Kelly Harnett]

So many of these women had lived the same stories.

[Danielle Robaix]

I said, were you a victim of domestic violence?

[Kelly Harnett]

And she was like, yeah, but maybe Kelly could change the ending.

[Danielle Robaix]

I said, how many people have gotten other incarcerated individuals out of here? I'm going to be the first one to do that.

[Kelly Harnett]

This is the story of Kelly Harnett, a woman who spent 12 years fighting not just for her own freedom, but her girlfriends, too.

[Danielle Robaix]

I think I have a mission from God to save souls by getting people out of prison.

[Kelly Harnett]

The girlfriends, jailhouse lawyer. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

My Uncle Chris is definitely somebody worth talking about. He was the kind of guy that used Confederate flags as window curtains, lived in a trailer with an ex con and a retired stripper, left loaded machine guns laying around, drank a bottle of whiskey a night, claimed he could kill a man with his bare hands, drove a garbage truck for a living, spoke fluent Spanish with a thick Southern accent, and is currently buried in a crypt alongside the founding families of Panama. Listen to the Uncle Chris podcast to.

[Holly Fry]

Hear all about him and a whole lot more.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This collection of stories will make you laugh, it'll make you cry, and if I do my job right, they'll let you see the world and your place in it in a whole new way. I can't wait to tell you all about Uncle Chris. Listen now to Uncle Chris on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Danielle Robaix]

Foreign.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

As we noted earlier, James Baldwin never seemed really sure where he fit within the civil rights movement. Although he participated in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, he wasn't a big part of its public presence or its planning. There's been some speculation that this was because of his sexual orientation, but as we've noted on earlier episodes of the show, one of the major planners of the march was Bayard Rustin, who was also gay.

[Holly Fry]

It's more likely that Baldwin's views were becoming less and less aligned with Martin Luther King Jr's non violent arm of the movement. As time went on, Baldwin became increasingly radical. When the Black Panther Party was established in 1966, Baldwin supported many of its efforts, including school breakfast and lunch programs, community health care programs, schools and armed self defense programs meant to protect black communities from violence, including violence at the hands of police.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Baldwin's written work had always been focused on both racism and homophobia, and he had been both critically acclaimed and a bestseller through this work. But in the late 60s and early 70s, reviewers increasingly criticized him for becoming more pessimistic, accusatory and vehement, and too directly focused on civil rights. This included the three act play Blues for Mr. Charlie which was based on the murder of Emmett Till.

[Holly Fry]

And it wasn't just white literary reviewers who were criticizing his work. His advocacy for Palestinian liberation was criticized as anti Semitic, although he also criticized anti Semitism within black activism. Members of the Black arts movement criticized his work because it was intended, at least in part, for white audiences rather than being written for other black people. The non violent arm of the civil rights movement criticized his more radical and confrontational views, while the Black power movement criticized his sexual orientation and his integrationist stances. His sexual orientation was also criticized from outside the movement. The Kennedys nicknamed him Martin Luther Queen.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

He basically was criticized from every conceivable direction in 1970, Baldwin returned to France, where he bought a farmhouse in the medieval village of St. Paul de Vence. Although he still did a lot of traveling, this became his permanent home for the rest of his life. Locals named it Shea Baldwin.

[Holly Fry]

Baldwin's writing and political views had always been anti capitalist, anti colonial, anti imperialist, anti racist, anti homophobic, Pan African, pro Palestinian liberation and against mass incarceration. He also made connections between black Liberation in the U.S. and United States foreign policy, noting that a nation that truly supported black liberation would be supporting black freedom fighters elsewhere in the world and supporting people who were fighting for independence from colonial powers.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

All this work had also been primarily focused on men. In the 1970s and 80s, that started to change, in part through televised conversations with poets Nikki Giovanni and past podcast subject Audre Lorde. Both women really pushed Baldwin on issues of gender, gender roles and sexuality, ultimately leading him to criticize the whiteness of the mainstream feminist movement, as well as its homophobia and anti lesbianism.

[Holly Fry]

But like Bayard Rustin, James Baldwin never took a leadership role within the gay rights movement as it became more public and widespread in the 1970s and 80s. He also expressed some ambivalence about exactly how to describe himself in his own identity. In one 1965 interview, he said, quote those terms, homosexual, Bisexual, heterosexual are 20th century terms which for me really have very little meaning. I've never myself, in watching myself and watching other people, been able to discern exactly where the barriers were.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I read one piece as I was working on this that, that noted that this has some similarities to conversations happening today about all of these ideas being socially constructed and what they mean.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Baldwin continued to travel and teach and write and work until late in his life. But by the late 1980s, he was having serious issues with his health. He had developed hepatitis and experienced liver damage back in the 1970s, followed by two heart attacks. Then in 1987, he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. I actually also found references that it was stomach cancer or pancreatic cancer, and I don't know which of those is correct. Regardless, though, the cancer progressed really quickly. He gave his last interview to journalist Quincy Troup just days before his death.

[Holly Fry]

James Baldwin died on December 1, 1987, at the age of 63. Lucien Habersberger was there with him, as well as a household attendant. His funeral was held at the Church of St. John the Divine in Manhattan with 5,000 people in attendance. Ameri Baraka delivered the eulogy with tributes from others, including Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In the words of Amiri Baraka's eulogy, quote, this man traveled the earth like its history and its biographer. He reported, criticized, made beautiful, analyzed, cajoled, lyricized, attacked, sang, made us think, made us better, made us consciously human, or perhaps more acidly, pre human. And also, in the words of Toni Morrison, addressing the late Baldwin as Jimmy, quote, in your hands, language was handsome. Again, in your hands, we saw how it was meant to be, neither bloodless nor bloody and yet alive. It should surprise no one who knows anything about Toni Morrison. That tribute to Baldwin from the funeral is beautiful, and I highly encourage reading it.

[Holly Fry]

During his lifetime, James Baldwin wrote 22 books, including six novels. He was a member of the National Advisory Board of the Congress on Racial Equality, as well as being a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, Writers, the Authors League, the International pen, the Dramatist Guild, the Actors Studio and the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

He also hoped that his home in France would be turned into a writer's colony after his death, but it was eventually sold to developers and torn down.

[Holly Fry]

Baldwin had been a bestseller during his career, especially during the prolific 1960s, but by the end of his life he was not as widely read. That started to change, as we said at the top of the show, with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and the many connections between the movement and Baldwin's ideas and writings decades earlier. In the last few years there's also been a film adaptation of his novel if Beale Street Could Talk, which came out in 2018, as well as the award winning 2016 documentary called I Am not yout Negro. As we said at the top of the show, Baldwin's work is frequently part of anti racism courses and rating lists.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So we thought we would end with just a couple of quotes quickly from that work. One is from the end of the fire next time quote, everything now we must assume is in our hands. We have no right to assume otherwise. If we, and now, I mean the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks who must, like lovers, insist on or create the consciousness of the others, do not falter in our duty. Now we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare and achieve our country and change the history of the world if we do not now dare everything, the fulfillment of that prophecy, recreated from the Bible in a song by a slave, is upon us. God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No more water, the fire next time.

[Holly Fry]

The other quote is from an interview that he gave in 1970 where he said, I'm optimistic about the future, but not about the future of this civilization. I'm optimistic about the civilization which will replace this one, and that is James Baldwin.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I talked to various friends as I was trying to figure out what I needed to work on next. And in every case, when I said I think James Baldwin, the answer was like, obviously yes. So yeah, I hope I have done his life and work justice today. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note, our email address is history podcastheartradio.com and you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Danielle Robaix]

Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime on the new podcast America's Crime Lab. Every case has a story to tell and the DNA holds the truth.

[Holly Fry]

He never thought he was going to.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Get caught and I just looked at my computer screen, I was just like, ah, gotcha.

[Holly Fry]

This technology's already solving so many cases.

[Danielle Robaix]

Listen to America's Crime Lab on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Kelly Harnett]

The Girlfriends is back with a new season, and this time I'm telling you the story of Kelly Harnett. Kelly spent over a decade in prison for a murder she says she didn't commit. As she fought for her freedom, she taught herself the law. He goes, oh God. Harnett jailhouse Lawyer and became a beacon of hope for the women locked up alongside her.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

You're supposed to have your faith in God, but I had nothing but faith in her.

[Danielle Robaix]

I think I was put here to save souls by getting people out of prison.

[Kelly Harnett]

The Girlfriends Jailhouse lawyer Lynn listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Danielle Robaix]

Just like great shoes, great books take you places through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies.

[Danielle Robaix]

I'm Danielle Robaix and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from hello Sunshine and iheart podcast where we dive into the stories that shape us on the page and off each week. I'm joined by authors, celebs, book talk, stars and more for conversations that will make you laugh, cry and add way too many books to your TBR pile. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So what happened at Chappaquiddick?

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Well, it really depends on who you talk to. There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond and.

[Holly Fry]

Left a woman behind to drown.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Chappaquiddick is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control. Every week we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America's royal family.

[Danielle Robaix]

Listen to United States of Kennedy on.

[Holly Fry]

The iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

You get your podcast. This is an iHeart podcast.