He died in 1943, and James then became the male caregiver for his mother and eight brothers and sisters. David Baldwin resented young James’ interests in reading, writing, theater, and cinema he also deeply mistrusted and expressed hatred for white people. His stepfather was a preacher and a stern and often furious parent, who beat him and told him he was ugly. He was keenly aware of his parents’ desperate efforts to keep their large family housed, clothed, and fed in a city that offered only badly paid domestic work to women of color and badly paid menial jobs to the men. Young James was reared among those whom he called the “truly needy,” in housing projects situated alongside the “American Park Avenue,” uptown in Harlem. Born at the Harlem Hospital to a single mother, who may have never disclosed the identity of his biological father, he later became the stepson of a preacher, David Baldwin, whom his mother married when he was about two or three. James Baldwin was a child of impoverished African American migrants from Louisiana and Maryland, who came seeking better jobs and economic stability in the industrial North.
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