James Baldwin is not the first Black American to attempt to escape America. I would say it’s a Black American tradition. We had Marcus Garvey who wanted to colonize Africa, but make it Black. Runaway slaves escaped and crossed the border into Mexico. Many Black Americans ran to Haiti when America decided to make colonizing Haiti, for a second and third time, its most important job. Black American artists— Nina Simone, Paul Robeson, Josephine Baker, and eventually Richard Wright, all left America because America is not a safe state for the lives of Black Americans or open to the success of Black Americans.
America is a dangerous place to be if you are Black. James Baldwin would eventually learn that the hard way. With a file opened on him as a disorderly that threatened that status of America as a slave state and the death of his close friends Medgar Evans, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X, James Baldwin fled to France. I imagine that if James Baldwin had not left, he too would have eventually been murdered.
It is not hard to imagine. Black people to today are still constantly dying in mysterious ways after leading protests or coming out against America’s stance as a slave state. If the state can get away with murder against regualr citizens right now, anything could have happened to James Baldwin back then.
But I do not believe that is the only reason James Baldwin left. In existing in America as a Black person, specifically as an African-American, you exist in a state of constant “strangerhood”. I define strangerhood as an existence where you are constantly considered a stranger, no matter how much time you have spent somewhere or who you know. While all Black people experience being a stranger in America, African-Americans live in a constant state of strangerhood from the time they are born to the day that they die.
You are not a citizen in America. The state does not care about your survival. The people who live in the state who are not Black do not know of your existence, and if they do know, they ignore it. You are transient. It is almost as though you do not exist. The first breath you take and the last breath you take are one in the same.
James Baldwin was aware of this existence, or lack thereof. Despite his feelings of being a stranger abroad, it was still better than being a stranger in his own country because at least there is a reason for him being a stranger abroad.
To be African-American and a stranger in America was and is to live a life of constant death, where every breath you take is like your last. While Baldwin initially criticized Richard Wright for moving to France and escaping America, Baldwin eventually recognized why. I attribute that realization to age and the wearing down of the Black spirit.
As a child, you are somewhat aware of being different. You notice how you are treated differently in school. You notice how your parents act differently in the home than outside the home. However, it is not until you are older that you begin to realize. And realizing is different from noticing. In realizing, you are feeling the effects of the things you noticed. You are being worn down by them. You are being torn apart by them. Eventually, some reach an age where they can not take it anymore. In realizing that they can not take it anymore, they escape somewhere else. As Baldwin and many other Black Americans did and continue to do.