Atop a cabinet, leaning against a wall of Dagmawi Woubshet’s office, is an enlarged framed cover of the May 17, 1963, issue of TIME magazine. Its portrait of writer James Baldwin stares into the room. Woubshet, associate professor of English, gestures to it several times as he talks about his research.
In that TIME cover story, the magazine heralds Baldwin as a leading voice of the Civil Rights Movement. “In the U.S. today there is not another writer—white or black—who expresses with such poignancy and abrasiveness the dark realities of the racial ferment in North and South,” it reads. It’s not surprising then that Baldwin is best known for his 1950s and 1960s essays on race and the black experience in America.
To continue reading this article from Cornell Research, click here.
More News from A&S
Jason Koski/Cornell University
Diana Ayubi helps Khurshid Hussainy with some finishing touches before a cap-and-gown photo shoot.
Ryan Young/Cornell University
Campus Community Leadership Award winner Netra Shetty ’25 (center-left) poses with (from left) Marla Love, the Robert W. and Elizabeth C. Staley Dean of Students; Alec Brown, program manager of the Hunter R. Rawlings III Cornell Presidential Research Scholars Program; Monica Yant Kinney, interim vice president for university relations; Sarah Bartlett, volunteer and outreach manager at the Ithaca Free Clinic; and Taili Mugambee, lead program coordinator of Ultimate Reentry Opportunity, outside of Day Hall