James Baldwin 100th: Archival Encounters at UChicago’s Special Collections Research Center

Born August 2, 1924, in Harlem, New York, James Arthur Baldwin rose from the harsh conditions there to become a major figure in American literary arts, a key voice for African American civil rights and social justice, and a tireless witness and advocate for humanity. His life, ideas, and works have had a significant impact on many. His fiction and essays made real the human condition and shamed those who failed the test of time and love, critical themes found at the heart of most of his work. August 2, 2024 marked the 100th anniversary of his birth.

He was invited to give a lecture in May 1963 at Mendell Hall. Images of the event are recorded in the 1964 “Festival of the Arts” section of the Cap and Gown yearbook. From other updates on the organizing of the Festival of the Arts, which also included lectures from James T. Farrell and Norman Mailer, the Daily Maroon reported that his “return from Turkey was uncertain.” He had been living there since 1961, as Eddie Glaude Jr. reports in Begin Again, that James Baldwin showed up at “Engin Cezzar’s door in 1961 in the middle of a wedding, almost penniless and in dire need of space to finish Another Country, Baldwin had not yet become an internationally famous American writer” (p. 125). However, by this time Another Country was published (where the Daily Maroon ran an ad describing it as a “powerful new novel”), along with the publication of The Fire Next Time. These publications would make his famous, ending, to some degree, his financial burdens. Other mentions of James Baldwin in the student newspaper advertised theater performances for plays like “Amen Corner” and “Blues for Mister Charlie.”

Digging a little deeper, we found several collections at SCRC where James Baldwin is mentioned, where information about the author might be engaged or discovered.

In the Chicago Review Records there are letters (dated 1958 to 1960) written between Baldwin and Ray Robert and Carl M. Dibble, both assistant editors, and the book review editor J. Charles Horwitz. at the time, concerning an article on “sex and color” that Baldwin was supposed to write for the magazine. Along with the piece that Baldwin has promised to write, he makes mention of his struggle to complete Another Country and that he would be traveling to the South of France to find a better place to write. As noted above, he ended up in Turkey, where he finished the novel.

The David Ray Papers include a letter from Baldwin to Albert Russo, dated April 1983, with Baldwin discussing his reading of Russo’s writings. Baldwin celebrated, “I’ve read everything you sent me, and I like your work very much indeed. It has a very gentle surface and a savage under-tow – the fiction – and I applaud the wicked portrait of Ionesco. You’re a dangerous man.” Baldwin then asks if he could forward Russo’s writings on to his friend, Toni Morrison, at Random House. “She is,” Baldwin noted, “in every way, beautiful, extraordinary, swift, and knows what you are talking about.” Also, there are 4 reel-to-reel tapes of James Baldwin included.

The manuscripts for “Many Thousands Gone” and “The Hard Kind of Courage” are housed here in the International Association for Cultural Freedom Records. It is not clear if these are original documents. In another folder there are what appear to be original manuscripts including “Le courage difficile” (The Hard Kind of Courage) and a handwritten narrative entitled “The Negro”; the subtitle is illegible. Both compositions are written in French.

Layle Silbert Papers include two copies of The Franklin Library’s “Signed Limited Editions” entitled Go Tell It On the Mountain. They are small pamphlet sized books that discuss, in part, Baldwin’s life story and the characters and plot of Baldwin’s Go Tell It On the Mountain. In another folder in the collection material there are two copies of a photograph of the author, appearing rather dreary and taxed, or sad, attempting a smile, or maybe not, staring down the lens of the camera with deep, dark eyes, much like some of the characters in his novels.

Robert W. Spike Papers contain two copies of the United Church Herald that includes the article “James Baldwin’s Confession,” written by Robert Spike, published in May 1963. There is also a magazine clipping of “Letter From A Region In My Mind,” James Finn’s “The Identity of James Baldwin,” published in The Commonweal (1962), and Spike’s book proposal of theological examination of the writings of James Baldwin, Philip Roth, William Styron, and J. D. Salinger. Some of it is handwritten and includes letters from the potential publisher.

Lastly, there are the Student Government Records. Students organized to intervene in the matter of a book banning at a local college. They had planned a campaign and may have been among the crowds that staged a sit-in at a City Council meeting. A single folder concerning a little-known incident with Baldwin’s novel, Another Country. The novel that brought him much acclaim, and that made it on the New York Times Best Seller’s list, staying there for 17 weeks straight. Of which he commented, “People bought Another Country in considerably larger numbers than I imagined they would. I suppose this must have something to do with the fact that many more people than are willing to admit it lead lives not at all unlike the lives of the people in my book” (The Cross of Redemption, p. 48). However, in Chicago, the book found itself at the center of book ban controversy.

The “short” of it: In November 1964 a 26-year-old student, who attended night classes at Wright Junior College (now the Wilbur Wright College), and her father, took issue with the novel being required reading for a course entitled Contemporary British and American Literature. They were upset that the novel contained interracial sex, homosexuality, and vulgar language and asked the dean to remove the novel from the required reading list. He refused their objection, “upholding the right of free inquiry and academic freedom” (Chicago Maroon, 1965, p. 2). This set off a chain of reactions and debates and protests until about March or April of 1965. It involved the Chicago City Council, led by Alderman John J. Hoellen (47th Ward), the Chicago Board of Education, the national and Chicago region Parent-Teacher Association (the Chicago Teachers federation), the American Association of University Professors, members of the Illinois legislature, the Chicago chapter of the Citizens for Decent Literature and Movies, faculty-administrators at Wheaton College, the Junior Association of Commerce (Wedgwood room of Marshall Field and Company), the Young Republican organization (Germania Club), the American Civil Liberties Union, faculty at Northwestern University, the Illinois Education Society, the Independent Voters of Illinois, faculty at Roosevelt University, faculty at De Paul University, the Chicago Interstudent Catholic Action Organization, a former professor at Yale University, faculty at the University of Illinois in Chicago, faculty at Indiana University in Bloomington, faculty at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, faculty at the Loyola University, faculty and administrators at the University of Chicago, the National Council of Jewish Women, the New World (publication of the Chicago Catholic Archdiocese), The Library Digest, the Library Journal, the Virginia Kirkus service, the Neighborhood Boys club (Irving Park Road), a former United States attorney, parents of students in Chicago schools, secondary and college students throughout the city, and the Mayor’s office. Interestingly, in the end, the novel remained on the list, an option was made for students who did not want to read the book, a new instructor was assigned to the course for the next term, and the previous instructor who assigned the book was given a two-month vacation. There was also mention in the news reports that depending on how this issue was resolved, the college could have lost its accreditation.

In Begin Again Glaude suggests that Baldwin was aware of the many gross violations happening in African American life at the time, even the issues in Chicago: “Baldwin witnessed near-daily acts of violence against black people, from the relentless repression of Black Power by law enforcement, to shoot-outs with Black Panthers, the gagging of Bobby Seale in a Chicago courtroom, and the murder of Fred Hampton—all of it collapsed into an unimaginably short period of time” (p. 128). So, one wonders if Baldwin had been made aware of the local biblioclasts in Chicago who took aim at him and his novel.

On this day of remembrance and thinking of the life and works of James Baldwin, pick-up Another Country and give a (re)read. Here’s Lawrence Jackson’s synopsis, described in his masterful work, The Indignant Generation: “The novel explores racial tensions between blacks and whites in the Bohemian circles of the American metropolis, portraying the attempts of lovers, black and white, gay and straight, to transcend the barriers that divide them. Although Paris appears as a place where such transcendence is possible, the novel makes it clear that escape abroad cannot substitute for the honest, painful confrontations necessary to overcome intolerance” (p. 224).

by Weckea Lilly

This post first appeared in a slightly different version on the SCRC Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/uchicagoscrc/757735267533799425/james-baldwin-at-100-archival-encounters-at?source=share