Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son

Referred to by Baldwin as the “Negro student movement,” the Black Student Movement comprised several student organizations centered on liberating American society from racist and restrictive attitudes and perceptions. For example, the SNCC (The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) conducted sit-ins around the country in the early 1960s to peacefully protest discriminatory practices of private businesses.

Referred to in Baldwin’s work as the “Conference of Negro-African Writers and Artists,” this event was one of two conferences which brought together Black intellectuals from around the globe. In “Princes and Powers,” Baldwin details the events of the first conference in Paris in 1956. The second conference was held in Rome in 1959.

Harlem is a neighborhood located in Upper Manhattan, New York. Baldwin was born in a Harlem hospital in 1924 and grew up in the neighborhood during the renowned Harlem Renaissance—a period of intellectual and cultural innovation led by writers and artists in the community. Baldwin references the Harlem Renaissance and the poet Langston Hughes in Chapter 9, explaining that the period has a name because white people suddenly learned that Black people had artistic talent.

This letter, written by writer William Faulkner in 1956, appeared in Life magazine in 1956. In the letter, Faulkner advises the NAACP to “go slow” in regard to segregation and civil rights activism. Faulkner suggests that civil rights activists have done good work but now must give white Southerners time to adjust. Baldwin directly addresses Faulkner’s letter in Nobody Knows My Name, arguing that more than 200 years of slavery is slow enough.

Baldwin mentions the “Muslim Movement” in Chapter 4 of Nobody Knows My Name, referring to the political and activist movements sparked by the Nation of Islam and religious and Black nationalist political organization. Malcolm X, an important figure in the civil rights movement who converted to the Nation of Islam, was a proponent of the idea of a total separation of races. Although Baldwin disagrees with the NOI’s projection of Black supremacy, he argues that one cannot deny the truth in the NOI’s arguments.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) began in 1909 to secure equal rights for all Americans. In Chapter 7, Baldwin explains that, for many Black Southerners, the NAACP represents the only organization that has put forth effort to secure their rights as citizens.