Words on image: Portrait of James Baldwin

Words on image: Portrait of James Baldwin -b. August 2, 1924 - d. December 1, 1987.

Photograph taken on September 13, 1955 By photographer Carl Van Vechten - b. June 17, 1880 - d. December 21, 1964.

"To be uncomfortable around him, I think, was to admit that you were unable or unwilling to face what you believed, what you had been taught was true, and what it had done to you and to others. In this sense he was very much a seer, and long before people picked up his books, they had been affected by him, provoked by him, moved to some form of action, noble or otherwise. "

"There was a phrase that was very popular in the 1930s--or at least that is when it came into my consciousness--that art was a weapon. I suppose it was incumbent upon the artist to decide what the weapon was meant to do, or to destroy, or to alter, or to build.

Jimmy believed that words were weapons, and they must be brilliantly crafted and burnished and then skillfully applied. He taught me so much. He was so unafraid. He built and he burnished and he struck, and people scattered but they also gathered and they learned."

-Tennessee Williams on James Baldwin-Interview with James Grissom.

-Photograph by Carl Van Vechten