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One source of support came from an admired older writer Richard Wright, whom he called "the greatest black writer in the world for me." Wright and Baldwin became friends for a short time and Wright helped him to secure the Eugene F. Saxon Memorial Award. Baldwin titled a collection of essays Notes of a Native Son, in clear reference to Wright`s novel Native Son. However, Baldwin`s 1949 essay "Everybody`s Protest Novel" ended the two authors` friendship[2] because Baldwin asserted that Wright`s novel Native Son, like Harriet Beecher Stowe`s Uncle Tom`s Cabin, lacked credible characters and psychological complexity. However, during an interview with Julius Lester, [3] Baldwin explained that his adoration for Wright remained: "I knew Richard and I loved him. I was not attacking him; I was trying to clarify something for myself."

Another major influence on Baldwin`s life was the African-American painter Beauford Delaney. In The Price of the Ticket (1985), Baldwin describes Delaney as "the first living proof, for me, that a black man could be an artist. In a warmer time, a less blasphemous place, he would have been recognized as my teacher and I as his pupil. He became, for me, an example of courage and integrity, humility and passion. An absolute integrity: I saw him shaken many times and I lived to see him broken but I never saw him bow."

Baldwin was a close friend of the singer, pianist and civil rights activist Nina Simone. Together with Langston Hughes and Lorraine Hansberry, Baldwin is responsible for making Simone aware of the civil rights movement that was forming at that time to fight racial inequality. He also provided her with literary references that influenced her later work

In 1953, Baldwin`s first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, an autobiographical bildungsroman, was published. Baldwin`s first collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son, appeared two years after. Baldwin continued to experiment with literary forms throughout his career, publishing poetry and plays as well as the fiction and essays for which he was known.

Baldwin`s second novel, Giovanni`s Room, stirred controversy when it was first published in 1956 due to its explicit homoerotic content.[4] Baldwin was again resisting labels with the publication of this work:[5] despite the reading public`s expectations that he would publish works dealing with the African American experience, Giovanni`s Room is exclusively about white characters.[5] Baldwin`s next two novels, Another Country and Tell Me How Long the Train`s Been Gone, are sprawling, experimental works[citation needed] dealing with black and white characters and with heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual characters.[6] These novels struggle to contain the turbulence of the 1960s:[citation needed] they are saturated with a sense of violent unrest and outrage.[citation needed]

Baldwin`s lengthy essay Down at the Cross (frequently called The Fire Next Time after the title of the book in which it was published)[7] similarly showed the seething discontent of the 1960s in novel form. The essay was originally published in two oversized issues of The New Yorker and landed Baldwin on the cover of Time magazine in 1963 while Baldwin was touring the South speaking about the restive Civil Rights movement. The essay talked about the uneasy relationship between Christianity and the burgeoning Black Muslim movement. Baldwin`s next book-length essay, No Name in the Street, also discussed

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