All of us are a product of our families and communities, and also, importantly the people we encounter throughout our lives, the ones who make us see a little more, think a little differently, demand that we stretch our awareness and grow. I have been unusually blessed in this area. Among the people who definitely helped me become who I am was James Baldwin. He became a member of my family and, in a hilarious self-made ceremony, godfather to my brother and me. When I was new in my writing career and I despaired at the number of rejections I was getting he encourage me to start wallpapering my walls with them. When I ran out he said he had a trunkful that he would supply so I could continue my decorating. After a hearty laugh I returned to my work with the word, determined to become better, stronger, more precise, and more courageous. But I really only had vague memories of how he came into our life. How, I asked my father, did he first connect with Jimmy.
Our connection was really black people. I met him originally about 1943. I had discovered the Village and was 17 wandering around and he was one of the black dudes around there and I met him. We talked about Harlem and where we lived. We didn’t really make friends or such. We really made a connection because of where we were. We connected on a level of alienation. I think he lived in the projects around 145th on the river and of course I lived on 117th. But he was cool.
A few years later I was with your mother and your mother had hooked up with some people who lived at 242 west 10th Street. We went there a couple of times. Jimmy was mentioned but he still didn’t touch anything. The Hartmans (long time family friends) had lived at 242 W 10th Street. John Hartman ripped off the daughter (took her from her family) of the sales manager for United States Steel and they got in John’s car and drove to California. Jimmy was planning to go to Europe and John said “Well, you can stay here.” And Jimmy says fine. Two days later up shows the FBI and they gave Jimmy a hard time. So Jimmy moved somewhere else. I believe it was 5th avenue.
I remember you coming into our room on 5th Avenue in San Francisco when I was eight or nine. I remember you standing in the door and being so excited because Jimmy Baldwin was coming to San Francisco. I had never seen you so excited about a human being coming and you were trying to say this person was so special.
What happened was that he came in to a symposium at SF State and with him was a guy name Russ Hill who was his fiction editor and I dropped him a note reminding him I was Reggie Major from Harlem. That ended up with him and Russ Hill and your mother and I meeting up at a place that is no longer in existence on 18th and Geary. I believe it was called Airplane at the time. Anyway we sat up most of the night talking and he said he’d look me up the next time he came through. He did and after that we became tight.
Did he have an impact on you or your writing?
He had an impact but his impact came from before we got tight. The first piece of his that I read was in Partisan Review. But mind you I’m not connecting the name James Baldwin with the guy I knew from the Village who was Jimmy actually. How do you remember when you are in late 20s early 30s a guy you met when you were 17 who says he is going to Paris to write a novel?
First Edition cover
Anyway he wrote an essay – you’ve read it was in Nobody Knows My Name that had to do with white teachers in Harlem teaching black kids how to talk in dialect and I had been through this and I read that thing and thought, “This could only have been written by a black person, as a matter of fact I’m willing to bet it could only have been written by a black person who was raised in Harlem.” So I read this thing and then I got really guilty about coming to that conclusion. You see it was the Uncle Remus accent, and accent that flows from whites’ reading. He also affected me greatly because he’s the one who put me on the non-fiction genre. (Most of my father’s published writings are news pieces for various magazines and newspapers and his two books A Panther is a Black Cat and Justice in the Round: The Angela Davis Trial.)
Of course, I read his novels. One of the best pieces for me was “Sonny’s Blues.” The reason for Sonny’s Blues was when I came out of the service all my homies who had not gone into the service were junkies or in prison. And in his piece that was the center of it. It was a powerful piece.
Pingback: One Dinner Party of Many- James Baldwin meets Eldridge Cleaver and Huey Newton – Devorah Major