Baldwin meets the painter Beauford Delaney, who becomes a mentor and who paints several portraits of Baldwin.
Baldwin graduates from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, where he was a member of the literary club and co-editor of the school newspaper, Magpie.
Baldwin meets writer Richard Wright, who refers his first draft of Go Tell It On The Mountain to Harper and Brothers publishing house.
Baldwin receives a $500.00 Saxton Fellowship from Harper and Brothers.
The first draft of Go Tell It On The Mountain is rejected by Harper and Doubleday.
Baldwin begins writing book reviews for The Nation and The New Leader, giving Baldwin a national platform.
"History as Nightmare," Baldwin's review of Chester Himes' novel Lonely Crusade, is published in The New Leader.
Baldwin expands his writing portfolio, publishing the essay "The Harlem Ghetto," a critique of worsening socio-economic conditions in Harlem, and the short story "Previous Condition," both in Commentary magazine.
Baldwin leaves for Paris.
Baldwin publishes "Everybody's Protest Novel" in the Paris magazine, Zero, in which he critiques Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Richard Wright's Native Son.
He is jailed in Paris for eight days for theft, having been falsely accused of stealing a hotel bed sheet.
"Many Thousands Gone," an essay published in Partisan Review, contains Baldwin's continued, scathing critique of Richard Wright, which leads to a falling out between Baldwin and his former mentor.
Baldwin completes Go Tell It On The Mountain in Switzerland, in Löeche-les-Bains, where he had stayed on three occasions with his Swiss friend and lover, the painter Lucien Happersberger.
Based on Baldwin's stay in Switzerland, "Stranger in the Village" is published in Harper's Magazine.
Go Tell It On The Mountain, Baldwin's first novel, is published.
Baldwin wins the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship.
He attends the MacDowell Colony artists' community in Peterboro, New Hampshire.
Baldwin attends Yaddo, a residential program for artists in Sarasota Springs, New York.
He revises his first play, The Amen Corner, during Howard University rehearsals and publishes it the same year.
He publishes his first collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son, which includes the autobiographical narrative "Equal In Paris," about being jailed in Paris in 1949, originally published in Commentary magazine.
Baldwin publishes Giovanni's Room with Dial Press, beginning a long relationship with the publishing house.
He accepts the National Institute of Arts and Letters Award and a Partisan Review fellowship.
Baldwin covers the First Conference of Negro and African Writers and Artists at the Sorbonne, sponsored by Presence Africaine.
Baldwin publishes the short story, "Sonny's Blues" in Partisan Review.
He travels to North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and other places throughout the South on assignment for Partisan Review. On this trip, he interviews student protestors and meets with Martin Luther King, Jr.
Baldwin is awarded a two-year Ford Foundation grant to complete Another Country.
Baldwin interviews film director Ingmar Bergman in Sweden, and he serves as an apprentice on Elia Kazan's productions of "Sweet Bird of Youth" and "JB."
He publishes the essay "Nobody Knows My Name: Letter From the South" in Partisan Review.
Baldwin covers sit-ins in Tallahassee, Florida, interviewing students at Florida A&M and then publishes "They Can't Turn Back" in Madamoiselle magazine about his experiences there.
Richard Wright dies suddenly of a heart attack.
Baldwin publishes his second collection of essays, Nobody Knows My Name, Dial Press, and appears on radio and television to promote the book and speak about civil rights.
Baldwin publishes the essay, "Alas, Poor Richard," another critique of Richard Wright's work.
Baldwin publishes "The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy" about his conflict with the novelist Norman Mailer.
At the invitation of Turkish actor Engin Cezzar, Baldwin makes his first visit to Turkey, where he completes Another Country and decides to make Turkey his writing haven.
Another Country is published by Dial Press and becomes a national best seller.
Baldwin travels to West Africa.
"Letter from a Region in My Mind," in which he correlates religion, safety, and fear, is published in the New Yorker, and is later re-printed in The Fire Next Time as "Down at the Cross" along with the shorter piece, "Letter to My Nephew."
The Fire Next Time, which includes an essay about meeting Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, is published to national acclaim, and Baldwin appears on the cover of the May 17th issue of Time Magazine.
He wins the Polk Memorial Award for outstanding magazine journalism.
Baldwin travels to Nairobi, Kenya with Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier to celebrate Kenya's independence.
Baldwin is elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
Baldwin publishes the play "Blues for Mister Charlie," Dial Press, and the theater production of "Blues for Mister Charlie" appears at the historic American National Theater and Academy (ANTA) in New York.
Baldwin publishes Nothing Personal with photographer and high school friend Richard Avedon, Atheneum Books.
Baldwin debates American author and noted conservative William F. Buckley, Jr. at Cambridge and receives standing ovation for his response to "Has the American Dream Been Achieved at the Expense of the American Negro?"
Baldwin publishes the volume of short stories, Going to Meet the Man, Dial Press, and the play "The Amen Corner" is performed in New York, Israel, and Europe.
Baldwin publishes the novel, Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, Dial Press.
Baldwin speaks at the World Council of Churches in Sweden against apartheid in South Africa, and testifies at a Congressional hearing to "Establish a National Commission on Negro History and Culture."
In his book Soul on Ice, Eldridge Cleaver uses homophobic language to attack Baldwin for his works and life choices.
Baldwin publishes The New York Times article "The Price May Be Too High" about black artists in a white dominated entertainment industry.
He directs the performance of John Herbert's play, "Fortune and Men's Eyes," about masculinity, sexual violence, and power in Istanbul, Turkey, at the theater of Engin Cezzar and Gülriz Sururi.
Baldwin becomes the subject of many photographs and a short art film, "James Baldwin: From Another Place," both by Sedat Pakay in Istanbul.
Baldwin holds conversations on race with the anthropologist Margaret Mead.
Baldwin and anthropologist Margaret Mead publish the transcript of conversations they held in New York in 1970 in a co-authored book, A Rap On Race.
He publishes "An Open Letter to My Sister, Miss Angela Davis" in The New York Times Review of Books.
Poet Nikki Giovanni interviews Baldwin in London on Ellis Haizlip's famous show, "Soul!"
Baldwin moves to the village of St. Paul de Vence in the South of France, where he first rents and then buys the house on Rue de la Colle from Mlle Jean Faure.
Baldwin publishes his essay volume, No Name In The Street, Dial Press.
He publishes his screenplay for an unrealized film, One Day When I Was Lost: A Scenario Based on The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., secures an interview with James Baldwin and Josephine Baker together in James Baldwin's house in St. Paul de Vence, France, which later inspires one of the characters in Baldwin's last play, The Welcome Table.
The transcript from his 1971 television interview with the poet Nikki Giovanni is published as the book, A Dialogue.
Baldwin publishes the novel, If Beale Street Could Talk, Dial Press.
He becomes the third recipient (after writer Tennessee Williams and dancer Martha Graham) of the prestigious Centennial Medal awarded to "The Artist As Prophet" by the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York.
Baldwin publishes a children's book, Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood, with illustrations by Yoran Cazac, Dial Press.
He publishes the book-length essay on cinema and popular culture, The Devil Finds Work.
Baldwin teaches a spring course in contemporary literature at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, later to return in 1979 and 1981.
Baldwin is awarded the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Medal.
Just Above My Head, his sixth and final novel, is published by Dial Press.
Baldwin speaks at UC Berkeley, where he teaches in the spring, as well as in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Santa Barbara, and he begins writing and lecturing on "Black English."
Baldwin publishes "Open Letter to the Born Again" in The Nation.
He travels throughout the South for a series of articles with The New Yorker.
Baldwin meets Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe at the 5th annual conference of the African Literature Association on the University of Florida campus.
Film makers Dick Fontaine and Pat Harley release a television documentary of Baldwin's trip through the South, "I Heard It Through The Grapevine."
Baldwin publishes selected poems in Jimmy's Blues, St. Martin's Press.
He teaches Afro American Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts in the fall.
Baldwin publishes "Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood" on issues of androgyny and "sexual deviance" in Playboy. The article is later reprinted in his collected volume, The Price of the Ticket, and later within James Baldwin: Collected Essays (1998), Library of America as "Here Be Dragons."
American Playhouse dramatizes Go Tell It On The Mountain.
Baldwin publishes a volume of reportage on the Atlanta children's murders, The Evidence of Things Not Seen, Holt, Rinehart & Winston Publishing and The Price of the Ticket: Collected Non-Fiction, 1948 – 1985, St. Martin's Press.
Baldwin receives France's highest civilian recognition, the Legion of Honor Medal from the president François Mitterand.
Baldwin travels abroad to the Soviet Union for an international conference and to London for a production of "The Amen Corner"; Baldwin suffers fatigue and becomes ill.
Baldwin returns to St. Paul de Vence, is diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus, which later spreads to the stomach, and grants his last interview to poet and journalist Quincy Troupe in mid-November in bed at his home.
Baldwin dies on November 30, and his assistant Bernard Hassell publicly announces his death on December 1.
Memorials for Baldwin are held in St. Paul de Vence and Harlem, and funeral services are held at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, where Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and Amiri Baraka perform eulogies. His body is buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.
Just Above My Head (1979) is translated into French under the title Harlem Quartet, for which Baldwin is posthumously awarded the French American Friendship Prize, the only French literary prize awarded to Baldwin.