2024, the year of james baldwinA yearlong celebration in Philadelphia of the 100th birth anniversary of American essayist, novelist, playwright, poet, and revolutionary James Baldwin. |
James Arthur Baldwin, God's Revolutionary Voice
In Celebration of the One Hundredth Anniversary of His Birth
THIS year is the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of JAMES ARTHUR BALDWIN (August 2, 1924 - December 1, 1987). The YEAR OF JAMES BALDWIN is a celebration of him and of his literary, philosophical, cultural, artistic, and ideological genius and his contributions to the revolutionary remaking of world humanity. Baldwin was arguably America’s greatest novelist and perhaps the greatest essayist in the history of the English language. He spoke through the language of the Old Testaments and the Gospels of the Bible, and the language of the modern world’s search for meaning. Speaking through the Book of Revelations, the last book of the New Testament, he declared as a warning to America, “God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No more water, the fire next time.” This unique intersection produced a creative way to explain America. He probed the complexities of the American mind—his principal concern—through the lenses of the aspirations and struggles of the African American working people. He was a teacher. For him, knowing carried with it the responsibility to teach, and teaching was a way of changing peoples’ consciousness, allowing them to become agents in the transformation of the world. Hence, in its deepest sense, his life’s work was the moral, spiritual, and political education of the people. He believed in people, and he believed in ideas. As such, he believed in human possibility. He believed that ideas when embraced by the people, are, perhaps, the most beautiful and powerful weapon of the people. Few have gone as far and deep as Baldwin in exploring human possibilities and probing the rich inner lives of people. He examined the contradictions, paradoxes and complexities of the modern situation. Through it all, he remained an optimist, believing in the revolutionary and emancipatory potentialities of human beings.
