I looked down the line,
And I wondered.

Everyone had always said that john would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father. It had been said so often that John, without ever thinking about it, had come to believe it himself. Not until the morning of his fourteenth birthday did he really begin to think about it, and by then it was already too late. — James Baldwin*

Join Ayana Mathis for an online discussion of Baldwin’s first novel, Go Tell It On the Mountain. See link below to register.

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN—A DISCUSSION

T Magazine Book Club

Thursday, December 17.

4 pm on the West Coast; 7 pm East Coast.

*James Baldwin, Go Tell It On the Mountain (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953); © 1953, 1985 by James Baldwin and the James Baldwin Estate.

From top: Toni Morrison and James Baldwin in 1986 at the Founders Day celebration, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York City, photograph by Hakim Mutlaq, courtesy and © the photographer; Harry Belafonte (left), Baldwin, and Marlon Brando at the 1963 March on Washington, © the Associated Press; Baldwin, Go Tell It On the Mountain (1953) reprint cover image (detail) courtesy and © Vintage International; Steve Schapiro, James Baldwin, Harlem, New York, 1963, gelatin silver print, courtesy and © the photographer; Thomas Allen Harris, Untitled (Amiri Baraka, Maya Angelou & Toni Morrison at James Baldwin’s Funeral at Cathedral of St. John the Divine), 1987, (Baraka’s face is partly hidden by torch on left).