Abstract

The critical orthodoxy about James Baldwin has been that he was a brilliant writer whose later work suffered from bitterness and pamphleteering. This view has obscured the radicalism of Baldwin's work. The seeds of his radicalism are apparent even in Baldwin's early liberal-integrationist work. It is a radicalism grounded in Baldwin's understanding of the inextricable connection between race and class and the history of blackness in the United States. The trajectory of Baldwin's move from Cold War liberal to Black Radical is best understood through a re-examination of Baldwin's relationship with Richard Wright and a re-evaluation of No Name in the Street, one of Baldwin's most reviled books. Understanding this trajectory casts both Baldwin and the African American literary tradition generally in a new, more radical, light