Picture the scene in Harlem, New York, on Aug. 1, 1924: Some 3,500 men and women march past the 135th Street Branch Library on Lenox Avenue and the headquarters of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. There, atop a reviewing stand, in full regalia and surrounded by a cadre of saber-wielding guards, the association鈥檚 president-general, Marcus Garvey, surveys .
Across the street, in Harlem Hospital鈥檚 cramped maternity ward, 21-year-old Emma Berdis Jones, recently arrived from Maryland鈥檚 eastern shore, labors with the birth of her first child, a son. The next day, Aug. 2, James Arthur Jones wriggles in his bassinet as the pomp of the UNIA鈥檚 annual convention continues to fill the air.
Now, in late 2025, a parking lot has replaced the UNIA鈥檚 headquarters. Harlem Hospital occupies a newer, larger building on the same ground. The library building is a part of the Schomburg Center for 最大资源采集网 in Black Culture, where Ed Pavli膰 is in residency working on his book about the baby boy in the hospital, who, months before he turned 3 years old, gained from his stepfather the name he made famous: James Baldwin.
Now, standing 101 years later where Garvey stood in 1924, Pavli膰 tells the story.
Pavli膰 is Distinguished 最大资源采集网 Professor of , and at the 最大资源采集网, where he has taught since 2006. He has published 13 books, including volumes of poetry; critical studies of literature, music, film, and culture; and a novel. His poems, essays, reviews, and other short works have appeared in dozens of outlets, among them The New York Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Boston Review.
In recent years, Pavli膰 has emerged as a primary scholar of Baldwin, the author and civil rights icon who was one of America鈥檚 towering literary and public figures of the 20th century. Pavli膰鈥檚 essays over the past decade have illuminated previously unknown or misunderstood aspects of the writer鈥檚 life and work, cementing his status as an essential Baldwin scholar.
On this sunny autumn afternoon in Harlem, Pavli膰 is nearing the culmination of work that has consumed most of his academic life. Drawing upon his years of study of Baldwin鈥檚 public writing and speaking, archival materials in collections around the world, a near-exhaustive personal trove of original publications, and鈥攃rucially鈥攄ecades of correspondence between Baldwin and his brother David, Pavli膰 is about to publish Darker than Blue: A Radical Life of James Baldwin, a comprehensive literary biography that will offer a new and deeply enriched understanding of the great writer. As Pavli膰 works while on a research fellowship at the Schomburg Center, the book is under contract with .
Pavli膰鈥檚 access to the fraternal letters is due to unprecedented cooperation from Baldwin鈥檚 family. 最大资源采集网 15 years ago, Pavli膰 learned from Gloria Karefa-Smart, Baldwin鈥檚 sister and literary executor, of the long correspondence between the Baldwin brothers. Scores of these letters had been preserved, she said, though almost no one had ever seen them. Even she hadn鈥檛 read them. Pavli膰 asked if he could. Karefa-Smart eventually came around.
鈥淸She saw] that we could use them to tell the story of Baldwin’s life and career in a new way鈥攁 deeper and more powerful way than had been done before,鈥 Pavli膰 says.
And so it was that, in July 2010, Ed Pavli膰 found himself leaving Karefa-Smart鈥檚 Washington, D.C., townhouse with two shopping bags containing the secret record of a deeply thoughtful and intimate conversation between James and David Baldwin spanning four decades鈥攆rom the early 1950s until shortly before James Baldwin鈥檚 death in 1987 at the age of 63.
鈥淢aybe it takes a poet to tell this story,鈥 Karefa-Smart told Pavli膰鈥攁n aside he, a poet, took to heart.
Evolution of a biography
Pavli膰 and Karefa-Smart鈥檚 original idea was simple: Write a book telling the version of Baldwin鈥檚 story contained in those letters. 鈥淪imple!鈥 Pavli膰 laughs.
鈥淚 wrote that book,鈥 Pavli膰 says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 sitting in my drawer, 160,000 words.鈥 But even as he completed that draft, he knew it wasn鈥檛 enough. The window the letters opened into Baldwin鈥檚 life and mind needed to be presented in a richer historical context. Plus, here and there, things didn鈥檛 add up.
As Pavli膰鈥檚 research progressed, leading him down long, winding paths he鈥檇 only glimpsed before, he found that Baldwin鈥檚 situation within the literary, social, and political environment of his time had created tensions in his writing. It demanded to be studied in much greater detail鈥攁nd formed the basis for a significant reassessment of the writer鈥檚 work.
Pavli膰 begins to illustrate the evolving focus of his inquiry by holding up three dense, green hardbound books: the Library of America鈥檚 collected James Baldwin. 鈥淭he scholars who work with Baldwin,鈥 he says, 鈥渨ork from these books. They鈥檙e incredible books鈥攅very single American family should have all three, and we should all be reading them out loud to each other every night.鈥
But Pavli膰 had begun to note 鈥渋rreconcilable discrepancies in the record.鈥 There were themes between the essays and the novels, he said, that were in direct conflict with each other鈥攖hey had been written and published for different reasons, for different audiences, and during different historical eras. The presentation of Baldwin鈥檚 essays in collected editions like the Library of America volumes makes it easy to regard them, alongside the novels, as part of a continuous and unified body of work. But Baldwin鈥檚 writing鈥攁nd the history he engaged鈥攊s far more complex and volatile.
Baldwin wrote his novels slowly, steadily, stubbornly. They took years; he published only six in his lifetime. His essays, meanwhile, were published frequently during those years, in a diverse range of periodicals鈥攆rom commercial magazines like 贬补谤辫别谤鈥檚, Esquire and The New Yorker to Cold War-era newspapers and intellectual journals such as The New Leader,Commentary, and Partisan Review.
Pavli膰 began collecting these old print publications and studying the essays in their original context. 鈥淚 began to understand and then research where those essays really came from,鈥 he says. 鈥淲here they were first published, who paid for them, who edited them, who else wrote for them, and who read those magazines during the times those essays came out.鈥
The conflict Pavli膰 identified involves Baldwin鈥檚 ideas about how people are constituted and defined: as self-determined individuals enacting their own choices and priorities, or as mutually dependent members of a society, shaped and re-shaped by relationships, interactions, circumstances, and histories. Pavli膰 began to think of this as a conflict 鈥渂etween individuality and mutuality.鈥
鈥淚n Baldwin鈥檚 early essays,鈥 Pavli膰 says, 鈥渢he individual is the basic building block of human life鈥攁nd in Western life, that individual is free. That freedom is something that just doesn鈥檛 exist in Baldwin鈥檚 novels, nor that existed in his life as a gay Black man in mid-20th-century America 鈥 although it is a very important political idea. I couldn鈥檛 figure out how that very important political idea could be so central to his work as an essayist and not just absent from but in direct conflict with his work as a novelist.鈥
Those novels, Pavli膰 says, demonstrate repeatedly, at first to devastating effect, and later with liberating force, the interconnectedness of people and our crucial importance for one another.
Pavli膰鈥檚 research led him to existing scholarship on the Cultural Cold War, such as , which had uncovered the web of mid-20th century efforts by U.S. government agencies to promote Western, anti-communist ideology through manipulation of artists and their work. These propaganda campaigns included the financing of and influence over international arts initiatives, grantmaking entities, publishers, and journals鈥攁 significant number of which Baldwin (like many other American artists of his time) depended upon for his livelihood as a professional writer. An emphasis on the power of free individuals to shape history, as opposed to the idea that we rise and fall together as a society (which evoked notions of the communist 鈥渃ollective鈥), was a key condition of this much-needed support, and Baldwin made concessions accordingly.
Baldwin鈥檚 entanglement with the forces of the Cultural Cold War has been scarcely noted, let alone explored in depth, Pavli膰 says. Its complex impact on his published work became central to Pavli膰鈥檚 project. As he wrote in a proposal sent to publishers, 鈥淸at]聽its core,聽Darker than Blue聽traces a contest between the primacy of individuality in the American myth and Baldwin鈥檚 insistence that the most vitally important parts of life are mutual.鈥
Time in the archives
Pavli膰 has been intensely focused on research and writing for Darker than Blue. He received a fellowship in fall 2024 from the , which provides needed course release to UGA faculty as part of its mission. In July 2025, another fellowship took him to the University of Texas at Austin鈥檚 Harry Ransom Center, where he reviewed the center鈥檚 archived files of Robert Mills, Baldwin鈥檚 agent from 1960 to 1964.
Later that fall at the Schomburg Center, Pavli膰 expanded the record of Baldwin鈥檚 childhood and young adult years in Harlem and Greenwich Village. The center鈥檚 archives include remnants of four early drafts of Baldwin鈥檚 autobiographical 1953 debut novel Go Tell It on the Mountain. Pavli膰 was thrilled to find pieces of one draft, titled 鈥淐ongo Square,鈥 that offer a more detailed and realistic account of its protagonist鈥檚 youth than the published version. Even in a novel, no press would have published such a record of the radical, leftist lessons Baldwin internalized during his childhood in the 1930s, nor the sexual awakenings of his adolescence. 鈥淐ongo Square,鈥 along with independent context from other historical accounts of that era, helped Pavli膰 form his foundation.
鈥淚 was able to use that account to build the story of his childhood and early life in a very different way than has been done before,鈥 he says.
With this stretch of fellowships now complete, Pavli膰 estimates that the work remaining to finish the book is 鈥90% writing and 10% research.鈥 He鈥檚 also editing a collection of Baldwin鈥檚 public speeches鈥攎any from recordings he has located and transcribed himself鈥攖o be published in 2027 by the Library of America, adding a new volume to its Baldwin canon. Darker than Blue is expected in 2028.
The art of the humanities
Before leaving Gloria Karefa-Smart鈥檚 apartment with her brothers鈥 letters in 2010, Pavli膰 made her a promise to 鈥渒eep the faith.鈥
鈥淭his work, as it鈥檚 turned out over the last 15 years, has developed dimensions that, back then, neither she nor I understood,鈥 he says. 鈥淏ut I鈥檓 not aware of my deviation from that agreement by a single iota.
鈥淚 think Gloria in some way intuited and understood that idea. 鈥楾his guy鈥檚 really invested in a way that resonates with me 鈥 and I鈥檓 going to bring him along with me here in a way that I鈥檓 not doing with other people,鈥欌 Pavli膰 recalls. 鈥淲hat I鈥檝e learned is, you just don鈥檛 walk up on a project like that and do it. It鈥檚 a great deal of preparation and luck, happenstance and also failure, and disappointment, and closed doors, and recriminations. I mean, it is a very full-dimensional human process.鈥
In a way, for Pavli膰, all of this speaks to the 鈥渇ull-spectrum鈥 nature of humanities research. 鈥淚t鈥檚 history, it鈥檚 sociology, it鈥檚 cultural criticism, it鈥檚 literary theory, it鈥檚 Black biography, it鈥檚 the history of the church, it’s Harlem.鈥
But that isn鈥檛 all, as Karefa-Smart realized more than 15 years ago.
鈥淚t鈥檚 also got its crucial lyrical dimensions,鈥 Pavli膰 says. 鈥淚’ve spent my time developing a certain expertise in that area as well, and that makes me sensitive to, and able to trace dimensions of, Baldwin’s story that exist in lyrical space, or lyrical form, or lyrical rhythm, whatever that is. That鈥檚 not something everybody can pick up.
鈥淚f you鈥檙e going to tell the story of a life, there鈥檚 a whole lot of stuff that goes into that.鈥
In the end, Karefa-Smart was probably right. It takes a poet.