This month the legendary writer and activist James Baldwin would have turned a hundred years old.

Baldwin is best known for his novels and essays and as a moral voice addressing race,

sexuality, and the very fabric of American democracy.

Nearly 40 years after his death, his words are more relevant than ever.

Jeffrey Brown looks at his enduring legacy for our series, Art in Action, exploring the

intersection of art and democracy and our ongoing canvas coverage.

The inequality, summoned by the American Negro population of the United States has hindered the American dream.

James Baldwin, novelist, essayist, civil rights activists, public intellectual, here debating William F Buckley Jr at the University of Cambridge in

1965

He's engaged in this ongoing work of self-creation in this sustained reflection on on the power of the American

idea he's bringing the full weight of his intellect to bear on this project.

Eddie Glau Jr. is a professor of African American studies at Princeton University,

an author of the 2020 book, Begin Again Again, James Baldwin's America America and its urgent lessons for our own.

I think if you read Baldwin closely, there is this underlying idea that we have yet to discover who we are, right?

Because the ghost of the past in so many ways not only blind us, but they have us by the throat.

James Arthur Baldwin was born in Harlem in 1924

and raised there by his mother and stepfather, a Baptist preacher.

The oldest of nine children he excelled in school and served as a junior minister.

A man on the margins, black and queer, he spent years of his life abroad, much of it in France, beginning at age 24.

He wrote novels including Go Tell It on the Mountain, an autobiographical book about growing

up in Harlem, and Giovanni's room about a tormented love affair between two men living in Paris and powerful essays exploring

race and American identity including notes of a native son and the

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