Emerson College Library: Teach-in on Race 2023: Event: An Evening in History with James Baldwin

An Evening in History with James Baldwin, Featuring Charles Reese

Thursday, February 16, 7:00pm-9:00pm

Description: This interactive literary and performance art salon bears witness (as James Baldwin would say) to a very unique time in history by shedding a light on the secret Baldwin/Kennedy Meeting of 1963 and further sparking a conversation on Race Relations in America. Reese achieves this by using excerpts from the critically acclaimed off Broadway playbook, James Baldwin: A Soul on Fire (written by the late playwright, Howard Simon & Edited by Reese).

The "Salon Experience" pays homage to the Harlem Renaissance by providing an atmosphere styled after creative literary "in-gatherings" with a dose of storytelling. Throughout the presentation call and response songs, poetry, art and culture are used as a tool to engage, educate and entertain.

Presenter:

Charles Reese, Actor, Author, and Founder and CEO of Teeth and Eyes Communications, LLC

Location

Semel Theater, Tufte Performance and Production Center - 3rd Floor
Boylston Alley

RSVP Link: https://forms.gle/HwnFfhAnuGjjpWU8A *

* Please note, RSVPs are appreciated but do not guarantee entry on the day of the event. Guests will be seated on a first come, first serve basis. Please arrive early to guarantee your seat.

James Baldwin: A Soul on Fire by Howard Simon
Inspired by the historical meeting between Baldwin and Attorney General Robert Kennedy, this play explores the author/activist's innermost passions in 1963, one of the most catalytic years of the struggle for the Civil Rights movement. The drama puts Baldwin in conversation with an ethereal representation of Lorraine Hansberry, Harry Belafonte, Lena Horne, and others, as he prepares for a roundtable discussion on race relations with Kennedy.

Available Online @ Emerson

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
ISBN: 9781299823129
Publication Date: 2013-01-01
Like the blues -- sweet, sad and full of truth -- this masterly work of fiction rocks us with powerful emotions. In it are anger and pain, but above all, love -- affirmative love of a woman for her man, the sustaining love of a black family. Fonny, a talented young artist, finds himself unjustly arrested and locked in New York's infamous tombs. But his girlfriend, Tish, is determined to free him, and to have his baby, in this starkly realisitic tale... a powerful endictment of American concepts of justice and punishment in our time.
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
ISBN: 9781299823044
Publication Date: 2013-01-01
Set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality. With a sharp, probing imagination, James Baldwin's now-classic narrative delves into the mystery of loving and creates a moving, highly controversial story of death and passion that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart.
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
ISBN: 9781299823068
Publication Date: 2014-06-15
"Mountain," Baldwin said, "is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else." Go Tell It On The Mountain, first published in 1953, is Baldwin's first major work, a novel that has established itself as an American classic. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935. Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves.
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin's early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document. It consists of two "letters," written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism.

I am Not Your Negro
Master filmmaker Raoul Peck envisions the book James Baldwin never finished. The result is a radical, up-to-the-minute examination of race in America, using Baldwin's original words and flood of rich archival material. I Am Not Your Negro is a journey into black history that connects the past of the Civil Rights movement to the present of #BlackLivesMatter.
James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket
James Baldwin was at once a major 20th-century American author, a civil rights activist, and a prophetic voice calling Americans, black and white both, to confront their shared racial tragedy. This film biography of Baldwin's life captures the passion of his beliefs with stirring excerpts from his novels and striking archival footage dating from the Harlem Renaissance through to the author's commentary on civil rights to his writing retreats in Istanbul and Europe. Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed, and William Styron provide insight as the program skillfully links excerpts from Baldwin's major works to different historical stages in black/white dialogue.
Debate : Baldwin vs Buckley
This video presents a debate between African American author James Baldwin and American political theorist William F. Buckley on the theme 'Has the American dream been achieved at the expense of the American negro?'
James Baldwin : speech on civil rights
This video is a film of James Baldwin giving a speech on civil rights to a group of students in London.

About James Baldwin

James Baldwin: Artist on Fire, A Portrait by W. J. Weatherby
ISBN: 1556111266
Publication Date: 1989-03-28
A long-time friend of the writer and social critic traces his development and journey from Harlem, to Paris, and finally back to America and discusses his lifelong dedication to articulate the intricacies of race relations and human struggle.
James Baldwin: a Biography by David Leeming
ISBN: 0394577086
Publication Date: 1994-03-29
This biography of the great African American novelist/essayist was written by a personal friend.
Baldwin's Harlem: a Biography of James Baldwin by Herb Boyd
ISBN: 9780743293075
Publication Date: 2008-01-08
In Baldwin's Harlem, award-winning journalist Herb Boyd combines impeccable biographical research with astute literary criticism, and reveals to readers Baldwin's association with Harlem on both metaphorical and realistic levels. Packed with telling anecdotes, Baldwin's Harlem illuminates the writer's diverse views and impressions of the community that would remain a consistent presence in virtually all of his writing.

Various Media

If Beale Street Could Talk [DVD]
Barry Jenkins directs an adaptation of the James Baldwin novel. A timeless love story set in early 1970s Harlem involving newly engaged nineteen-year- old Tish and her fiance Fonny who have a beautiful future ahead. But their plans are derailed when Fonny is arrested for a crime he did not commit. Now the pair and their families must fight for justice in the name of love and the promise of the American dream.
Go Tell It On The Mountain [videotape]
Stan Lathan directs a made-for-television drama based on the James Baldwin novel of the same name. Available on VHS.
The Negro Writer in America [cassette]
Panel discussion with various writers, including Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, and Langston Hughes. The participants discuss their views on writing and on American life. Recorded in 1961.
James Baldwin reads from Just Above My Head [cassette]
Two excerpts from Baldwin's 1979 novel. The first is the opening scene of the novel, the second a crucial childhood memory the narrator has of his brother, Arthur, and their father, Paul.
James Baldwin interview with Kay Bonetti [cassette]
James Baldwin talks about his current stands on many racial and aesthetic issues discussed in his essays, including the role of the artist in Western culture.

Teach-in on Race 2023

Teach-in Official Website

An Evening in History with James Baldwin, Featuring Charles Reese

Location

Available Online @ Emerson

About James Baldwin

James Baldwin on the Library Shelves

Jimmy's Blues

James Baldwin: Early Novels and Stories

Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone

Going to Meet the Man

Another Country

The Amen Corner: A Play

Blues for Mister Charlie: A Play

One Day, When I Was Lost: A Scenario

Vintage Baldwin

The Evidence of Things Not Seen

Price of The Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, 1948-1985

Notes of a Native Son

The Cross of Redemption

James Baldwin: Collected Essays

Conversations with James Baldwin

Various Media