James Baldwin Went To School Here

Yesterday (April 17), I was strolling down Lenox Avenue, near 140th Street, in Harlem, when a school building caught my eye. As I stood across the street from the building I saw carved  into the facade above the entrance the words "Public School 139." It dawned on me that this might be the school that James Baldwin attended in the late 1930s before he moved on to DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. When I got home, I looked through my Baldwin biographies and confirmed that it was. P.S. 139, also known as  Frederick Douglass Junior High, was where Baldwin became the editor of The Douglass Pilot, the school magazine. It was also where poet Countee Cullen became one of his teachers as well as the faculty advisor to the literary club of which Baldwin was a member.

The five-story, red-brick  building is now the property of the New York City Housing Authority which has transformed the building from a place of learning into a senior citizens residence.

There's a sign on the building that states "Welcome To...P.S. 139 Senior Citizens Building," but I didn't see one commemorating James Baldwin as an alumnus of P.S. 139.

If Baldwin were alive today he would be almost 91 years old and eligible to live in the building where he once attended school.