Autograph postcard signed to Beauford Delaney (1901–1979)

ROBERT REID-PHARR: I don’t think that James Arthur Baldwin would have become the person who he became if he had not met Beauford Delaney as a teen.

HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR.: Dr. Robert Reid-Pharr is a professor at New York University. He’s written and lectured extensively on James Baldwin and is currently at work on a new Baldwin biography.

REID-PHARR: When James Baldwin met Beauford Delaney, he was more or less coming to the end of his time being fully involved in church life. He was having to make decisions about what kind of person he was going to be, and certainly Beauford Delaney helped him to do that. Beauford Delaney was himself a prominent painter, one of a very, very small handful of Black artists, and certainly Black painters, who was getting the occasional exhibit in some of the major galleries.

GATES: When Baldwin sent Delaney the postcard here, they’d been friends for 15 years. Baldwin liked choosing postcards appropriate for the occasion. This one is a picture of a painting: Saint Martin and the Beggar, by the Renaissance artist El Greco. It depicts Saint Martin giving half of his cloak to a man in need. 

REID-PHARR: The card is written from Washington, D.C., soon after the successful run of Baldwin’s first produced play, The Amen Corner, at Howard University. Now the funny thing about the card is that it’s super, super, super homoerotic. Certainly Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin were very, very blunt about their attraction to men, and talked about it, and were fun and catty with each other about it. So clearly one of the things that’s going on is that. I’m pretty certain that part of what Baldwin is meaning to broadcast here as well is in fact that he is a beggar. He didn’t have a bit o’ money after that play. He wanted it to be produced on Broadway—that really did not happen for a good long while. And so he was really in dire straits financially.

GATES: There might be yet another way in which Baldwin’s postcard speaks to his relationship with his dear friend and former mentor.

REID-PHARR: Baldwin identifies clearly as the beggar here, but he also, I think, identifies as Saint Martin, because he’s really having both moments all at the same time. Beauford Delaney’s health, in fact, had been deteriorating, particularly his mental health. 

The card says: “I will be a little late but I’ll be there.” James Baldwin is, he is specifically sending a note to assure Beauford Delaney, who is a person who can be fragile. That sort of “the son becomes the father” role, and that sort of caretaker role is a role that James Baldwin is going to be heavily involved in until the end of Beauford’s life.