Who is James Baldwin from the nonfiction book, Just Us: An American Conversation?

James Baldwin was a 20th-century author and racial justice activist well-known for novels like Go Tell It on the Mountain and Giovanni's Room and the essay collection Notes of a Native Son. Rankine quotes Baldwin several times in the text, and repurposes selections from one of his essays into a poem in the chapter "evolution." In this essay-turned-poem, Baldwin says that white people "seem to lack the energy / to change this condition," referring to racism, and so "they would rather not be reminded of it" (68). Though the essay this quote was taken from, "The White Man's Guilt," was written in 1965, it bears significance still, as Rankine engages in several conversations with white people who would rather not be reminded of racism throughout the text.