James Baldwin

CTL-E-5695 · Person · writer · 1924–1987

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-06977 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-5695.

James Baldwin (born James Arthur Jones on August 2, 1924, in Harlem, New York) was the novelist and essayist who became the moral witness of the American civil rights era. A teenage preacher in Harlem, he left for Paris in 1948 and published Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), Notes of a Native Son (1955) and Giovanni's Room (1956). The Fire Next Time (1963) — two letters on race, faith and the American future — made him a national figure, and his essays, novels and speeches carried the movement's case in a prose no contemporary matched. He died of stomach cancer at his home in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France, in late 1987 — reference works differ by a day on the date, giving November 30 and December 1; this record follows November 30 and prints the variance. He had been made a Commander of the French Legion of Honour in 1986. His unfinished manuscript Remember This House became the 2016 documentary I Am Not Your Negro. CultureTechLens profiled Baldwin in Short #186.

The record

• Also known as: James Arthur Jones, James Arthur Baldwin

Notes

STAGED 2026-10-16 (747 Program, Shorts Reverse-Gap Wave 6) — not merged; awaits founder merge go. Gate A: no match in the live graph (3,409 entities) under exact, normalized, alias, or token-containment screening, 2026-10-16. Reverse gap: CTL Short #186 published before any entity record existed. Vital status: Deceased — died 1987, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France (date variance November 30 / December 1 printed on the record). Tribute treatment applies. Photo HELD — candidate requires file-page-level license verification. Project ID: PPL-001 per wave precedent (staged 'CULTGRAPH' ID is not registered). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Person records carry no map slot under the media-layer rule; maps attach to places and institutions.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created SVG (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced facts) | video = FILLED | audio = HELD (No CTL-owned or rights-cleared matching-entity audio at staging; the subject's own recordings are third-party )

Referenced by

• I Am Not Your Negro — authored by → this record

Sources

• Encyclopaedia Britannica, 'James Baldwin' (via britannica.com) and New York Times obituary reporting — death date November 30, 1987, Saint-Paul-de-Vence [primary] (primary source · build store)
• Wikipedia, 'James Baldwin' — cross-checked against Britannica, October 2026 (works chronology, Time cover, Legion of Honour; carries the December 1 variant on the death date) (build store)
• Vintage Books (Penguin Random House), 'The Fire Next Time' — work record and author biography (vintagebooks.com) (build store)
• CultureTechLens, Shorts Link Map §C catalog record, short_no 186 (CTL Short; url_status: recorded) (build store)

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Record CTL-E-5695 · Combined Graph record U-06977 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 4 sources · 1 mapped relationship.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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