Reading Notes W14: Baldwin, Part A

• Baldwin's father died on July 29th, 1943. (736)
• His last child was born hours later after he died (736)
• A race riot broke out a few hours after the funeral (736)
• August 3rd of 1943, they drove his father to the graveyard through a wilderness of smashed plate glass (736)
• Day of funeral was his 19th birthday (737)
• Baldwin thought of this as an apocalypse (737)
• He didn't know his father very well. He didn't realize how little they spoke to each other until after his father passed away. He wishes he had spoken to him more (737)
• His father's mother was born during slavery. He was of the first generation of free men (737)
• His father was born in New Orleans (737)
• They had a picture of Louis Armstrong on their wall for a long time (737)
• His father would preach sermons, but Baldwin grew up to view his father as someone who looked like an "African tribal chieftain" (737)
• "He was certainly the most bitter man I have ever met" (737)
• "He knew that he was black but did not know that he was beautiful" (738)
• Baldwin had been gone from his home for over a year when his father died (738)
• After his father died, the other children feared inviting friends over to the house because their friends would feel insulted or that they'd rob the family of everything they owned. Baldwin claims to have hated his father because he didn't believe they owned anything that anyone would want to steal (738-9)
• "The only white people who came to our house were welfare workers and bill collectors" (739)
• At school, his young white schoolteacher wanted to take him to the theater. "Theater-going was forbidden in our house" (739)
• When his father got laid off from his job, this schoolteacher became important to Baldwin (740)
• His father warned him that his white friends in high school were not really his friends and that he would see when he was older how a "white man would do anything to keep a Negro down" (740)
• Baldwin, when hanging out with friends, would answer sharply with smart remarks to counterman at restaurants. Their answer to him would be "We don't serve Negroes here." (741)
• July 28th, Baldwin visited his father for the first time during his illness and the last time in his life (744)
• Baldwin went with his father's older sister to visit him. Baldwin also begun smoking (745).
• Baldwin didn't own a lot of black clothes for the funeral (746).
• Some girl Baldwin was going to go on a date with found a black shirt for him. He went to the funeral wearing that shirt, a black jacket, his darkest colored pants, and slightly drunk. (746)
• "Only the Lord saw the midnight tears" (747)
• "Thou knowest this man's fall; but thou knowest not his wrassling" From English author John Donne's Biathanatos, a defense of suicide. (747)
• His father asked him one time, "You'd rather write than preach, wouldn't you?" (748)
• He didn't want to go to the casket alone nor look at his dead father. A deacon walked up there with him. "I cannot say that it looked like him at all" (748)
• After the funeral, Baldwin still tried to celebrate his birthday. A Negro soldier got into a fight with a white policeman over a Negro girl. It ended with the shooting of the soldier (748-9)
• "All of my father's texts and songs, which I had decided were meaningless, were arranged before me at his death like empty bottles waiting to hold the meaning which life would give them for me. This was his legacy: nothing is ever escaped" (750).

Baldwin, James. "Notes of a Native Son." The Norton Anthology World Literature, edited by Martin Puchner, Third Edition, vol. F, W. W. Norton 2012, pp. 735-750