James Baldwin
The museum specifically documents King’s 1968 assassination as a major turning point for Baldwin. By 1971, Baldwin had settled in Saint-Paul de Vence. The official Saint-Paul de Vence tourism site describes the village as the place where he spent the last 16 years of his life, while the Smithsonian identifies his home there as his permanent residence from 1971 until his death.
In later accounts, Baldwin described the effect of King’s death on his own life and said it contributed to his decision to seek refuge in the South of France. France did not erase the difficulties Baldwin carried with him. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture notes that the assassinations of Black leaders during the 1960s took a profound emotional toll on him. Baldwin had known Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., and their deaths contributed to a period of emotional and physical strain.
When James Baldwin arrived in Paris on November 11, 1948, he was 24 years old and had just $40 in his pocket. In 1971, after years of living between countries and spending time in Turkey, Baldwin settled in the small Provençal village of Saint-Paul de Vence in southern France. His years in Saint-Paul de Vence coincided with some of his later literary work, including Just Above My Head, published in 1979, and If Beale Street Could Talk, published in 1974. Baldwin died on December 1, 1987, at the age of 63. He had spent the previous 16 years living in Saint-Paul de Vence, making the house the longest-lasting home of the final chapter of his life.
Baldwin’s French home therefore became closely associated with the community he built around himself during his final years.
The house, later known as “Chez Baldwin”, became his permanent home, workplace and gathering place during the final 16 years of his life. He had left the United States amid the racism and homophobia that had shaped much of his early life, hoping to find enough distance to write and understand the country he had left behind. France would remain central to his life for decades, but his final home was not in Paris. He moved into a house belonging to Jeanne Faure, initially renting rooms before gradually buying the property piece by piece with proceeds from his publications. The purchase, however, was not legally complete when Baldwin died, leaving the property at the centre of a later dispute over its ownership. The house was far more than somewhere Baldwin lived. The Smithsonian describes it as his permanent abode and an important social centre for artists, writers, intellectuals and members of his family from Europe, Africa and the Americas. The house’s location also placed Baldwin close to a network of people who became important to his daily life. He developed a close relationship with the Roux family of La Colombe d’Or, the celebrated restaurant and hotel in the village, where he regularly spent time. Dr Roger Boizard became the general practitioner for Baldwin’s household for nearly a decade and also a close companion. Baldwin’s circle in Saint-Paul de Vence included artists and writers such as Arman, Corice Canton, Wanda and Dick van Dijk and Nicholas Delbanco. The house gradually became a place where professional relationships and friendships overlapped with ordinary daily life. The social life surrounding Chez Baldwin extended well beyond the village. The Smithsonian’s documentation of the house records visits from numerous writers, musicians, actors and artists, including Josephine Baker, Nina Simone, Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Yves Montand and Simone Signoret. Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier are also documented among Baldwin’s visitors. The garden and rooms of the house provided a setting for conversations, meals, writing and artistic exchange. the legal ownership remained unresolved when he died, setting up the dispute that followed over the future of the property Although he had worked for years to acquire it piece by piece.
It also provided Baldwin with a setting in which he could continue writing away from the pressures of the cities where he had previously lived.