James Baldwin's Home in France Should be a Black Artist's Mecca. Instead, It's an Apartment Complex

American Writer James Baldwin in Paris.

For lovers of Black literature, James Baldwin was one of the greatest. And while he was born in Harlem and influenced by the Civil Rights Movement, he produced some of his best work from the south of France, where he lived for nearly 20 years until his death in 1987. In search of an escape from the racism and homophobia he experienced in the United States, it was there that he finished his 1953 novel “Go Tell it on the Mountain” and his 1955 collection of essays “Notes of a Native Son.” It was where he hosted parties with a guest list that read like a who’s who of Black creatives, including Ella Fitzgerald, Maya Angelou and Nina Simone. And it was where he went to heal after the tragic assassinations of his close friends and civil rights icons, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Baldwin left New York for France with 40 dollars in his pocket. And as he told The Paris Review in 1984, as a Black man, it was a move he needed to make to save his life.

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The fact that future generations of Black writers won’t get to experience Baldwin’s creative oasis for themselves is enough to anger friends and fans alike.

“James Baldwin is a legendary writer. So how come this house was destroyed? Taken away, and destroyed?” Belgian singer David Linx, who lived with Baldwin in France for a few years, told Financial Times. “I try not to get impassioned, but every time I do, because there is something that is not resolved. This should not have happened. This place should have been a sanctuary.”

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