‘Birmingham is a doomed city’: James Baldwin and his complicated relationship with Alabama

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. ( WIAT ) — “Having reactions symptomatic of hysteria barely controlled; always on the edge of tears; can’t sleep; headaches–have a touch of the flu or something.”

Writing from his room at the A.G. Gaston Motel in Birmingham on October 18, 1957, James Baldwin described how his trip through the South had been going the last few weeks. Baldwin, then 33, had never spent any time in the South, but with the desegregation of Montgomery’s buses, as well as the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the young writer went out to see what he could in the hotbed of the civil rights movement in the South.

Friday marks what would’ve been the esteemed writer and public intellectual ’s 100th birthday. Although he spent most of his working life living outside the United States–especially in France during his final years–Baldwin’s writings were wholly of Black American experience in America, reflections in books like “Notes of a Native Son” and “The Fire Next Time” that continue to inspire millions today.

In his letter from Birmingham, Baldwin wrote about how racial tension was tearing apart the city.

“Have spent my day walking around the city, talking to people, including a white man who works for the National Conference of Christians and Jews, who now is forced–literally–to leave Alabama,” he wrote. “Can’t take any more burning crosses, the isolation, economic reprisals (credit standing gone).”

By this time, Baldwin had been demoralized by what he had seen throughout the South, as reflected through the research of University of Georgia professor Ed Pavlic, who wrote extensively about Baldwin’s correspondences at the time in places like Brick magazine , Boston Review , and his book, “ Who Can Afford to Improvise?: James Baldwin and Black Music, the Lyric and the Listeners .”

“I have a very strong feeling I best not linger here,” Baldwin wrote. “I’ve never in my life been on a sadder journey…”

The week before, Baldwin had been in Montgomery, having just ridden the city’s desegregated buses with hostile white passengers.

“I think that I have never been in a town so aimlessly hostile, so baffled and demoralized,” Baldwin wrote years later in a piece for Harper’s Magazine, “ The Dangerous Road Before Martin Luther King .” “Whoever has a stone to fling, and flings it, is then left without any weapons; and this was (and remains) the situation of the white people in Montgomery.”

Nonetheless, Baldwin did find some hope in Alabama, especially after attending MLK’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery one Sunday for a community meeting. It was here where Baldwin felt the transformation of the movement taking place before his very eyes.

“Until Montgomery, the Negro church, which has always been the place where protest and condemnation could be most vividly articulated, also operated as a kind of sanctuary,” he wrote. “When King rose to speak-to preach-I began to understand how the atmosphere of this church differed from that of all the other churches I have known,” Baldwin wrote. “At first I thought that the great emotional power and authority of the Negro church was being put to a new use, but this is not exactly the case. The Negro church was playing the Martin Luther King, same role which it has always played in Negro life, but it had acquired a new power.”

Nonetheless, the trip did little to improve Baldwin’s hopes. In his 1959 piece for Partisan Review, “ Nobody Knows My Name: A Letter from the South ,” he wrote about how true change will have to spread from each major city in the South before real change can come.

“When a race riot occurs in Atlanta, it will not spread merely to Birmingham, for example. (Birmingham is a doomed city.) The trouble will spread to every metropolitan center in the nation which has a significant Negro population. And this is not only because the ties between Northern and Southern Negroes are still very close. It is because the nation, the entire nation, has spent a hundred years avoiding the question of the place of the Black man in it.”

Despite how his trip through Alabama weighed on him, Baldwin did not turn his back on the state, coming back to take part in the Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1963. Following the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Baldwin and others used their voices to inspire others during the “ National Day of Mourning for the Children of Birmingham .”

Baldwin’s trip through Alabama and the South also gave him a perspective on how those in the North used the South to cover up their own inaction in the fight for civil rights.

In his 1960 essay for Esquire Magazine, “ Fifth Avenue, Uptown ,” Baldwin discussed how the plight of Blacks in the South were often ignored by those in the North.

“Northerners indulge in an extremely dangerous luxury,” Baldwin wrote. “They seem to feel that because they fought on the right side during the Civil War, and won, they have earned the right merely to deplore what is going on in the South, without taking any responsibility for it; and that they can ignore what is happening in Northern cities because what is happening in Little Rock or Birmingham is worse.”

Baldwin’s observations ultimately helped him to see that what was happening in Birmingham at the time was happening in other places, too.

“White people are astounded by Birmingham. Black people aren’t,” Baldwin can be heard saying in the documentary “I Am Not Your Negro.” “White people are endlessly demanding to be reassured that Birmingham is really on Mars. They don’t want to believe, still less to act on the belief, that what is happening in Birmingham is happening all over the country.”

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