Editing James Baldwin (section)

==Early Life==

James Baldwin was born on August 2, 1924, in Harlem, New York City, to Emma Berdis Jones. He never knew his biological father. His mother later married David Baldwin, a factory worker and storefront preacher from New Orleans, whose strict religious beliefs and volatile temperament had a profound influence on James's early life and writing.

Baldwin grew up in poverty in Harlem during the Great Depression. Despite difficult circumstances, he showed exceptional promise as a student and was an avid reader from a young age. He attended Frederick Douglass Junior High School, where poet [[Countee Cullen]] was one of his teachers, and later DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, where he edited the school literary magazine.

In his early teenage years, Baldwin became a junior minister at a Pentecostal church, an experience that deeply shaped his literary voice and his complicated relationship with faith — themes he would return to throughout his career.