Barbara P. Moss
James Baldwin was a brilliant storyteller who excelled in spite of a cruel, overbearing father, bullying Harlem schoolmates, and a white society that had no appreciation for a wiryframed Black boy with distinctly African features.
Baldwin is famous for
The Evidence of Things Not Seen,
which is a poignant account of the Atlanta child murders.
Blues for Mister Charlie
and
Another Country
are also superb works of this talented storyteller.
Blues for Mister Charlie is
a play based on the case of Emmett Till—the Black teenager who was murdered in Mississippi in 1955. The murderer was acquitted. His brother who helped him commit the crime, later became a deputy sheriff in Rulesville, Mississippi. After his acquittal, he recounted facts of the murder to William Bradford Huie, who wrote it all down in an article called “Wolf Whistle.”