The MacDowell Artists' Colony in Peterborough held a ceremony on Sunday to name its library for literary great James Baldwin.
Members of the public were welcome at the event, and several current and former MacDowell residents were in attendance.
Former fellow Kevin Young, now an award-winning poet and director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, believes there's a groundswell of interest in Baldwin of late.
"He's thinking a lot about some of the things we're thinking a lot about,” said Young, who is also the poetry editor for the New Yorker. “Questions of injustice and race. And the divide. The history of the things that divide us as Americans. And I think he's become all the more relevant."
Baldwin, who was one of the first African Americans to come to the MacDowell Artists' Colony in 1954, called it his “favorite sanctuary for writing.” "Notes of a Native Son," his 1955 collection of essays taking on issues of race and civil rights in America, was written in part at the colony.
Young says coming back to MacDowell years after his fellowship brings him back to when he first wrote there. He says the fellowship was a great vote of confidence early in his career, before he had ever published a book.
“I feel that way about thinking about Baldwin,” Young says. “I think it was a crucial time in his writing, 1954-1960 and he’s really writing from ‘Giovanni’s Room’ to ‘The Fire Next Time,’ and to know that they came out of MacDowell Colony in some way is really important.”
The MacDowell library that now bears Baldwin’s name houses some 15,000 works of art from fellows over the Colony’s 111-year history.
Writer and former MacDowell fellow Florence Ladd spoke at the event and recalled some of her time spent with the author. Baldwin, who died in 1987, was known to Ladd simply as Jimmy. During her last meeting with him, Ladd said Baldwin was concerned that his reputation was not what it once was.
"This Library bears his name and carries on his reputation,” Ladd said. “So here and beyond here, everybody knows his name. Viva Jimmy!"
