Kevin Young on Protecting and Preserving Black History
February 17, 2021
Born in Harlem, James Baldwin wrote often of his beginnings here, including his reading “every single book” in the transformative space now known as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. “I went to the 135th Street library at least three or four times a week, and I read everything here. I mean, every single book in that library,” Baldwin wrote. “In some blind and instinctive way, I knew that what was happening in those books was also happening all around me. And I was trying to make a connection between the books and the life I saw and the life I lived.”