Scarred by the Rock

Abstract

David Baldwin was born in Bunkie, Louisiana, around 1863; he lived in New Orleans before he migrated to Harlem. ¹ He married James Baldwin’s mother, Berdis Jones, in 1927. Baldwin writes, “That man I called my father really was my father in every sense except the biological, or literal one. He formed me, and he raised me, and he did not let me starve: and he gave me something, however harshly, and however little I wanted it, which prepared me for an impending horror which he could not prevent” (CE, 486). ² With “his black lunchbox in his hand” and wearing “a Derby or a Homburg… a black suit, white shirt, dark tie, looking like the preacher he was,” David Baldwin went to work at a soft drink factory in Long Island every weekday (355). He thought he was a righteous and “Godly” man, whom the “Lord” had called to preach. One of his favorite scriptures was, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Josh. 24:15). James Baldwin called him “the great good friend of the Great God Almighty” (CE, 356). He never seemed to realize that his cruelty to his stepson and asperity toward his neighbors put his “God” in a very unfavorable light. Not unlike the frightening Old Testament deity (who comes across in Joshua as the Génocidaire), David Baldwin frightened his stepson “so much that ‘[he] could never again be frightened of anything else.’” ³ His father once gave him a dime to buy fuel for the stove. James Baldwin slipped on the ice-coated streets and lost it. His “father beat [him] with an iron cord from the kitchen to the back room and back again, until [he] lay, half-conscious, on [his] belly on the floor” (CE, 818).