James Baldwin's Essay 'Down At The Cross'

Famed Author Honored in Greenwich Village

James Baldwin died in 1987, but another plaque in his honor was just placed in New York 's Greenwich Village. He already had two other notable plaques in the city. This one was placed at 81 Horatio Street where much of his work "Another Country" was penned. According to The Network Journal, the bronze plaque, about 14 x14 inches, was placed by Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation with generous support by the Two Boots Foundation. The ceremony was attended by many notables including photographer and writer Fran Leibowitz and Trevor Baldwin, the writer’s nephew.

Baldwin fell in love with The Village when he was 15 and met the artist Beauford Delaney. Delaney became his mentor and taught him that a

These were two issues of great difficulty in 1948 New York. He ended up leaving America and moving to France where he lived for most of his life.

During the 1960s, Baldwin returned to the United States to help black Americans in their struggle for equality. He became friends with Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Baldwin wrote a massive essay "Down at the Cross" about the racial discontent of 1960s America. The essays were published in two special-sized issues of "The New Yorker" and garnered him the cover of "Time" in 1963. He started touring, speaking, and championing equal rights.

Baldwin could be seen on college campuses and on television. He was a lightning rod between Christianity and the Black Muslim movement, trying to show the peace and love of both and striving to better race relations in

He wrote of his own experiences in the 1960s in "No Name in the Street". In the book he explains much of his personal struggle, living through the '60s, and how he dealt with the assassination of three of his close