James Baldwin's work still acclaimed 100 years after his birth

Writers no longer stand at the center of American society as James Baldwin did during his career.

Baldwin's novels, essays and plays are receiving new attention in connection with the 100th anniversary of his birth on Aug. 2.

After the success of his 1953 novel "Go Tell It on the Mountain" and 1955 essay collection "Notes of a Native Son," Baldwin was a prominent authority on civil rights and American culture, frequently appearing on television and publishing prophetic essays like "The Fire Next Time" in the New Yorker and other publications.

Known as a civil rights activist who expressed black anger and frustration to alarmed white intellectual audiences, Baldwin lived most of his adult life in France, where he died in 1987, with frequent returns to the United States to cover the civil rights movement and revel in New York literary life.

He enjoyed friendships with a wide circle of writers and encouraged William Styron to write "The Confessions of Nat Turner," a fictionalized account of the Virginia slave rebellion led by Turner in 1831.

As many black writers attacked Styron's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel as a prototype of black cultural appropriation by a white writer, Baldwin and black novelist and essayist Ralph Ellison defended Styron.

Baldwin burnished his fame by winning a televised debate against white conservative William F. Buckley in 1965 at the Cambridge Union Society in Great Britain on the question "The American dream is at the expense of the American Negro." 

Successfully arguing that black inequality was the product of American racism, Baldwin passionately disputed Buckley's contention that black suffering came from a lack of individual responsibility.

Published two years before his death, Baldwin's "The Evidence of Things Unseen" cast doubt on Atlanta's investigation of the child murders that terrorized the city from 1979-1981.

Baldwin's account of the city's racial conflicts and economic disparities resulted from his reporting on the murders for Playboy magazine. He expressed doubts about Williams' guilt, which have persisted.

While Baldwin's later work received initial critical disapproval, it's gaining renewed appreciation. His writing remains one of the major achievements of 20th century American literature.