James Baldwin Signed Time Magazine Cover.

American novelist and social activist James Baldwin’s deeply personal and provocative stories examined both the African American and homosexual experience when neither identity was accepted by American culture. Baldwin's works galvanized the nation and gave a passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement and his influence on the development of a number of fellow emerging African American authors was unprecedented. A native of Harlem, Baldwin’s writing career began in 1948 when left the United States for France to become a writer. While in Europe he published Go Tell It on the Mountain, his first novel, which immediately catapulted him to literary fame. This first novel was followed by Giovanni's Room, which was met with controversy for its explicit depictions of homosexuality and bisexuality. Set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, the narrative centered on a young man caught between desire and conventional morality. In 1963, Baldwin published The Fire Next Time, a work that consisted of two “letters,” written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhorted Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism. At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin’s early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the collection of essays proved to be an intensely personal and provocative document.