Love Has Never Been a Popular Movement
By Rakhee Bhatt | August 2, 2025
Honoring James Baldwin on what would have been his 101st birthday.
James Baldwin in Hyde Park, London in 1969. Photo by Allan Warren. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
When the present loses its way, it is the voices of the past that can still guide us forward. James Baldwin (8/2/1924 - 12/1/1987) remains among the most enduring. He never looked away, using his work to pierce through palatable illusions. In a better world, a writer like Baldwin would have felt more like a record of what we had overcome, not a mirror still held up to the present. But … here we are.
Under the weight of exile and other pains he carried, Baldwin still believed in humanity. Some of his most timeless words were spoken in the 1970 documentary Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris, reminding us:
“The world is held together by the love and the passion of a very few people.”
I didn't grow up reading Baldwin, though I wish I had. I came across a few of his essays and old interviews in my twenties. But it wasn't until my early thirties, with the release of I Am Not Your Negro in 2017, that I truly began engaging with his work, and at a time when I was asking harder questions of the world and of myself. And, somehow, it felt like he had already been walking beside me. He gave me language for things I had felt but couldn't yet name. His words gave me answers — certainly not easy ones, but necessary ones.
Through Baldwin's essays, books, interviews, and the sheer beauty of who he was, he reminded me that rage is not the opposite of love, but it's often what protects it. That grief isn't weakness, but it's evidence that we cared deeply. That to tell the truth of now is also to shape the possibility of what comes next. And that speaking the truth, in a world that punishes truth-tellers, is a sacred and necessary act.
We are made to believe that cruelty wins each day. That the systems are too far gone to be of service. That humanity has slipped far beyond our grasp. So much of what surrounds us is designed to break us. But Baldwin knew better. He showed us that the world will forever be held together by the few who love and care, feel it all deeply, and refuse to turn cold.
So on this day, Baldwin's heavenly birthday, let us remember not just what he said, but who he was. Let us heed his unwavering call to be more human toward one another, not less. To honor his legacy is to become the love that holds you and the world together.