“This was not as real as my despairing sense that nothing was real for me, nothing would ever be real for me again – unless, indeed, this sensation of falling was reality…”

American writer and civil rights activist

James Arthur Baldwin was an American writer and civil rights activist. He became known for his essays, novels, plays, and poems, and for his forceful public voice during the civil rights movement in the United States. His novel Go Tell It on the Mountain was published in 1953, and Notes of a Native Son, the 1955 essay collection, helped establish his reputation as a writer committed to human equality. He also took part in a 1965 debate with William F. Buckley that is regarded as highly influential.