James Baldwin was born in 1924 in Harlem, New York City. Many of the details in the life of John, the main character in Go Tell It on the Mountain, parallel facts in Baldwin' s own life. He was an awkward, gangly boy who suffered the abuse of his stepfather, a laborer and storefront preacher who had moved to New York from New Orleans. In contrast to the squalor and anger that he experienced at home, Baldwin was a resounding success at Public School 24 and at Frederick Douglass Junior High School, where his teachers recognized his brilliance and verbal skills. At age fourteen, he, like John, experienced a religious conversion during the service at his church, the Mount Calvary of the Pentecostal Faith Church.

After that, Baldwin became a preacher himself, and throughout high school he addressed the congregation at the local storefront church at least once...