May 18, 1953: Go Tell It On the Mountain, the 1st novel by James Baldwin, is published. It becomes a literary landmark of the Civil Rights Movement.
The author was born as James Arthur Jones on August 2, 1924 at Harlem Hospital in Manhattan. Jones was his mother's family name, and he was never told who his biological father was. She married a man named Baldwin, and he gained 8 step-siblings. Following his stepfather, James became a "boy preacher," although he had other jobs, admitting, "I never had a childhood... I did not have any human identity... I was born dead."
A library on 135th Street became his sanctuary, and he saw Orson Welles' all-black stage rendition of Shakespeare's Macbeth in 1936. He gained admission to DeWitt Clinton High School in The Bronx, which was mostly-white and mostly-Jewish until the 1950s, and the last boys-only high school in New York until 1986.
He did well at Clinton, including writing for the school newspaper. But it was also there that he discovered that he was homosexual. He turned toward his faith, and became a teenage preacher at a local Pentecostal church. He stopped shortly after graduating from Clinton in 1941, later writing that the church "was a mask for self-hatred and despair... salvation stopped at the church door."
He didn't find salvation in his next phase, either: Working on laying railroad track for the U.S. Army in New Jersey. Most of the other workmen were white Southerners, who called him "uppity" for his outspokenness. He returned to New York, worked a series of menial jobs, had one-night stands with both men and women, attended an acting class with Marlon Brando, who became a lifelong friend, and suffered the first of what became many nervous breakdowns.
In 1945, he started a literary magazine called The Generation. He wrote many reviews for The New Leader, but was published for the first time in The Nation in a 1947 review of Maxim Gorki's Best Short Stories. In 1948, his 1st essay, "The Harlem Ghetto", was published a year later in Commentary and explored anti-Semitism among Black Americans. His conclusion was that Harlem was a parody of white America, with white American anti-Semitism included.
That year, sick of prejudice in America, he moved to Paris, and was soon involved in the cultural radicalism of the Left Bank. Although he was poor there, he had never felt more free, and it led him to write his 1st novel, with the title of a "Negro spiritual": Go Tell It On the Mountain.
The book has a nonlinear structure. The story takes place during one 24-hour period in Harlem in 1935 -- the same year as Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in Alabama, although that book wouldn't be published for another 7 years -- but contains extended flashbacks, which cover a period of more than 70 years. The novel is focused on John Grimes, but narrative voice shifts between characters' perspectives, allowing access to the thoughts and reminiscences of John's father, mother, and aunt.
The novel is divided into three parts: "Part One: The Seventh Day," "Part Two: The Prayer of the Saints" (divided into parts for Florence, Gabriel, and Elizabeth), and "Part Three: The Threshing-Floor." The first and final parts mainly follow John's thoughts, with glimpses of the thoughts of others; while the sections in Part Two mainly follow the thoughts of the character for whom they are named.
Baldwin wrote of balancing "holiness," through the family's church, and "worldliness," through the people John meets in New York. Race, sex, family, guilt, and the use of language are all major themes.
In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Go Tell It on the Mountain 39th on its list of the 100 Best English-Language Novels of the 20th Century. Time magazine included it on its list of the 100 Best English-language novels released from the magazine's 1923 debut until the list's publication in 2005.
It has been filmed only once, for PBS in 1984. Baldwin was pleased with the adaptation, saying in an interview with The New York Times, "I am very, very happy about it... It did not betray the book."
Baldwin wrote 5 more novels. Giovanni's Room, published in 1956, was perhaps the first widely-read novel to treat a male homosexual relationship the way a traditional heterosexual relationship would have been, as nothing out of the ordinary, without stigma. His later novels included Another Country, published in 1962; Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, in 1968; If Beale Street Could Talk, in 1974; and Just Above My Head, in 1979.
But he has become better known for his collections of essays, many of them previously published individually in magazines: Notes of a Native Son, published in 1955; Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son, 1961; The Fire Next Time, 1963; No Name in the Street, 1972; The Devil Finds Work, 1976; and The Evidence of Things Not Seen and The Price of the Ticket, both in 1985.
The Price of the Ticket includes "The American Dream and the American Negro," based on remarks by Baldwin made in his debate on race relations with William F. Buckley, the editor of the conservative magazine National Review, at the Cambridge Union Society on February 18, 1965.
Baldwin lived most of his years of fame in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, in Provence in the south of France. He died there on December 1, 1987, of stomach cancer, at the age of 63. He was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, Westchester County, New York, also the final resting place of such noted African-Americans as Malcolm X and other members of his family; civil rights figure Whitney Young; singers Paul Robeson and Cab Calloway; actors Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Adolph Caesar and Northern Calloway; comedian Moms Mabley; jazz legend Thelonious Monk; singer Aaliyah; hip-hop figures DJ Jam Master Jay and Dwight "Heavy D" Myers; and basketball star Malik Sealy.
Also: Composers Béla Bartók, Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein, Harold Arlen, Ray Block and Alan Jay Lerner; actors Basil Rathbone, Joan Crawford and Judy Tyler; film director Preston Stuges, TV host Ed Sullivan; historians Charles and Mary Beard; ice cream magnate Tom Carvel; playwright Moss Hart and his wife, actress Kitty Carlisle Hart; economist Ludwig von Mises; restaurateur Bernard "Toots" Shor; Kent State shooting victim Jeffrey Miller; and Joseph Pilates, the physical trainer who developed the method that bears his name.
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May 18, 1953 was a Monday. These baseball games were played:
* The New York Giants beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 8-6 at the 1st Busch Stadium, which had recently been renamed after 44 seasons as the last Sportsman's Park, in St. Louis. Hank Thompson and Monte Irvin, who debuted in the same 1949 game as the 1st 2 black players in Giants history, hit home runs against the still-all-white Cardinals. Willie Mays was serving in the Korean War, and thus unavailable for the Giants. Stan Musial went 3-for-5 for the Cards.
* The Brooklyn Dodgers lost to the Cincinnati Redlegs, 2-1 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. This was the 1st of 6 seasons in which the Reds called themselves the Redlegs, because they were cowards in the face of McCarthyism. Ted Kluszewski hit a home run in the bottom of the 10th inning, ending a fine pitcher's duel between Elwin "Preacher" Roe and Clarence "Bud" Podbelian. Jackie Robinson went 1-for-4 with 2 walks, and drove in Dem Bums' only run.
* A doubleheader was split at Fenway Park in Boston. The Detroit Tigers won the opener, 5-2. The Boston Red Sox won the nightcap, 8-5. Ted Williams was serving in the Korean War, and was discharged in time to return until August 6. Al Kaline made his major league debut for the Tigers on June 25.
* The Washington Senators beat the Chicago White Sox, 3-0 at Griffith Stadium in Washington. Connie Marrero pitched a 5-hit shutout. He was one of several Cuban players, black and white alike, that the Senators recruited in a vain attempt to improve themselves.
* The Milwaukee Braves beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 4-0 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Bob Buhl pitched a 7-hit shutout. Del Crandall hit a home run.
* And the New York Yankees, the Chicago Cubs, the Cleveland Indians, the Philadelphia Athletics, the Pittsburgh Pirates and the St. Louis Browns were not scheduled.
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