James Baldwin was the son of parents David Baldwin and Emma Berdis Jones. David was his stepfather who passed away in 1943. His mother also died on February 27, 1999, at the age of 95 years. She was born in 1904.
Who were James Baldwin’s parents David Baldwin and Emma Berdis Jones?
Emma Berdis Jones was one of the many who fled racial segregation in the South during the Great Migration. She arrived in Harlem at 19 years old.
Emma Berdis Jones married her husband David Baldwin who was a laborer and Baptist preacher in 1927. David Baldwin was born in Bunkie, Louisiana, and preached in New Orleans, but left the South for Harlem in 1919.
According to James Baldwin’s semi-autobiographical Go Tell It on the Mountain, the characters based on the two are introduced by the man’s sister, who is a friend of the woman, that is how David and Emma met.
Emma Baldwin would bear eight children with her husband—George, Barbara, Wilmer, David Jr. (named for James’s father and deceased half-brother), Gloria, Ruth, Elizabeth, and Paula—and raise them with her eldest James, who took his stepfather’s last name.
Source: Ghanafuo.com
