Happy birthday to James Baldwin, the extraordinary Black queer author, poet and civil rights activist, whose life and legacy we celebrate today.
In his honor, we share this intriguing article by The Atlantic praising the brilliance of his letters. The piece begins with a correspondence in 1974 between Baldwin and Abel Meeropol, his one-time high school English teacher who wrote "Strange Fruit" and, along with his wife, adopted the sons of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg:
"'My dear Mr. Meeropol,' the correspondence begins. 'Your letter is completely unanswerable because it drags up out of darkness, and confirms, so much.' It was the fall of 1974, and ... he was one of the most famous writers in America. Yet, in the middle of it all, Baldwin took the time to respond to his high-school English teacher Abel Meeropol, an author in his own right who, under the pen name Lewis Allan, wrote the poem 'Strange Fruit,' later recorded by Billie Holiday.
Meeropol had reached out to his former student, the 'small boy with big eyes,' to reminisce on their time in the classroom ... In the humblest possible manner, Meeropol also shared his own work, including his titanic poem, which had by that time become *the* Black American protest song."
Read the full article here: https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2024/08/james-baldwin-letters…