Baldwin reframed Dorothy Counts’ story to open with trauma

Evidence

But even when Baldwin wrote about his trip south two years later, in a 1959 article for Partisan Review, he did not mention the particular image of Dorothy he later claimed made such an impression on him. He offered instead a description of the end of Dorothy’s ordeal, her decision to leave the school and the regrets and trauma that accompanied it. Years later, in No Name in the Street, he would start at the beginning, with the image of her amid the hatred on her first day, and use the famous photo of Dorothy to justify his own decision to join the fray. Trauma did not come at the end, rather, it framed the story. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, 169

Categorization

• XREF: The shift from ending-with-trauma (1959) to framing-with-trauma (1972) demonstrates exactly how the after times reshaped Baldwin’s narrative method — usable evidence for the recanonization argument.