When Pauli Met James
The relationship of two Black icons.
From August to September 1954, Pauli Murray the lawyer, activist, and writer attended the MacDowell Colony (aka The Colony) in Peterborough, NH. The Colony was a “retreat for artists, composers, and writers”. Located in the woods, it consisted of 25 studios where each artist could reside during their respective stays. Murray lived in the Youngstown Studio. James Baldwin, who had published his first novel Go Tell It On The Mountain the year before, lived in the Baetz studio next to Murray. Murray and Baldwin were the first two Black artists to be admitted to the Colony since it was founded 47 years prior in 1907.
Murray, who was 43 at the time, joined the Colony so that she could work on what would become her first autobiography Proud Shoes: The Story Of An American Family (1956) while Baldwin, who was 30, was there to work on his sophomore novel, Giovanni’s Room (1956). The two writers also worked on revisions of projects that would later be published. Murray revised poems that would become Dark Testament and Other Poems (1970) and Baldwin worked on two essays that would be included in Notes of a Native Son (1955).
Murray’s Description of Baldwin
Murray wrote about Baldwin in her journals, she described him as “intense”, “sensitive, soft spoken…delicately put together”, and “dedicated to become a great artist”. The historian Rosalind Rosenberg states that Baldwin was “basically a copy of Pauli, except for the ‘soft spoken’ part”. Murray also wrote that Baldwin “moves in quick, hesitant glides, tears himself to pieces over his typewriter until he forgets the dinner bell and has to be rescued by a yell from Pauli as she starts homeward swinging her dinner basket”.
According to Murray, she and Baldwin were friendly and supportive of each other. They would hang out in Murray’s studio or go into town together, to catch a movie or drink at the local bar. Baldwin encouraged Murray to “dig more deeply into the meaning of race” in her autobiography Proud Shoes. The two may have even talked about more personal matters such as their shared queerness. Murray wrote that “Baldwin suffered from ‘inner conflicts and terrors’, her code for sexual or gender conflicts and the fear of being discovered”.
In their discussions on the ‘race problem’ with their fellow Colony members, Murray was loud while Baldwin was quiet. However, that differed when they shared their writings with the other retreat artists. Murray’s writing was “conciliatory” while Baldwin’s was “indicting” of white civilization.
The Latter Years
We don’t know much about Murray and Baldwin’s relationship post-1954. They both attended the MacDowell Colony again, but never at the same time. Murray attended in 1955, 1956, and 1959, and Baldwin in 1958 and 1960. Murray would publish three more books in her lifetime and Baldwin would publish 12 more in his.
In July 1968, Murray attended the Fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Uppsala, Sweden. While there Murray helped draft the “Background Statement on White Racism” which was included in the official Assembly adopted “Report of the Committee on Church and Society”. She also fought to have women added to the leadership of the Assembly’s organizational bodies.
On July 7, she attended a session titled “White Racism or World Community?” which was chaired by the German theologian Rev. Dr. Martin Niemöller. The speakers included the United Kingdom’s Representative to the United Nations, Lord Caradon, and Murray’s former MacDowell Colonist, James Baldwin. During his remarks, Baldwin “challenged the church directly…suggesting that it was guilty of having forgotten the meaning of the words ‘Insofar as you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me.’” It is not known if Murray and Baldwin spoke or caught up with each other when they were both in Sweden.
Influence on Each Other
We know that Baldwin had some influence on the writing that Murray worked on at MacDowell, specifically Proud Shoes and possibly Dark Testament and Other Poems. However, Murray did not mention Baldwin in her Acknowledgments section in Proud Shoes. She does thank Marian MacDowell, founder of MacDowell Colony, the MacDowell staff, and her “sister Colonists and writers Henrietta Buckmaster and Helene Hanff whose mutual support through the dark hours of creative chaos before the birth of the inevitable word was crucial”.
The only other time that Murray references Baldwin is in 1978, 10 years after she saw him in Sweden and a year after she was ordained as the first Black woman Episcopal priest. In her sermon titled “Can These Bones Live Again?”, she mentions Baldwin among a collection of writers who “documented the exile years” in Black history.
It’s unclear if Murray had the same or any influence on Baldwin and his writings. Baldwin does not mention Murray in any of his published nonfiction essays, novels, or plays. She is not mentioned in biographies that other authors have written about him. It is almost as if Baldwin made more of an impression on Murray than vice versa. Hopefully, that is not the case; prayerfully, someone finds a mention or two of Murray in the relatively new James Baldwin archives at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, that will enlighten us more on the relationship between these two important Black figures of the 20th Century.
Sources:
Azaransky, Sarah. 2007. “The Dream is Freedom: Pauli Murray’s Theology of American Democracy”. Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia.
Baldwin, James. 1968. “White Racism or World Community?”. Address to the World Council of Churches, July 7, Uppsala, Sweden. In James Baldwin: Collected Essays edited by Toni Morrison. 1998.
Bell-Scott, Patricia. 2016. The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice. Knopf.
Leeming, David. 1994. James Baldwin: A Biography. Arcade Publishing
MacDowell.org. “James Baldwin”. https://www.macdowell.org/artists/james-baldwin
MacDowell.org. “Pauli Murray”. https://www.macdowell.org/artists/pauli-murray
Murray, Pauli. 1956. Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family. Harper & Brothers.
Murray, Pauli. 1978. “Can These Bones Live Again?”. Women’s Day Service, March 12, St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, Raleigh, NC. In To Speak a Defiant Word: Sermons and Speeches on Justice and Transformation by Pauli Murray and edited by Anthony B. Pinn. Yale University Press. 2023.
Murray, Pauli. 1987. Song in a Weary Throat: An American Pilgrimage. Harper & Row.
Rosenberg, Rosalind. 2017. Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray. Oxford University Press.
Schuessler, Jennifer. 2017. “James Baldwin’s Archive, Long Hidden, Comes (Mostly) Into View”. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/12/arts/james-baldwins-archive-long-hidden-comes-mostly-into-view.html
World Council of Churches. 1968. The Uppsala Report 1968. Official report of the Fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches. Uppsala, July 4th-20th 1968. https://archive.org/details/wcca14/mode/2up
