James Baldwin Publishes 'Notes of a Native Son'

James Baldwin's essay collection 'Notes of a Native Son,' published in 1955, established him as the preeminent essayist examining race in America and the most intellectually formidable Black public intellectual of his generation. The essays combined personal memoir with trenchant social criticism and literary analysis in a voice that was simultaneously intimate and panoramic. The collection set the standard for the American personal essay on race that continues to define the form.