Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son

Baldwin argues that the North is a reflection of the South. A Black person in the North who visits the South feels similar to an Italian American visiting Italy for the first time. Baldwin feels this while visiting Georgia. As his plane touches ground, he thinks about the experiences of his ancestors on Southern soil and the many tales of violence and hardship Black people have faced in the state.

Baldwin breaks down the social hierarchy of the city of Atlanta and the differences between the Black people who live in the city versus those who live in rural areas. Baldwin proposes that Atlanta is the perfect parallel for the American South. He highlights the divide between the wealthy Black and white residents in the city. Wealthy Black Atlanteans feel separated from both their white and Black peers.

He juxtaposes Atlanta with Charlotte, North Carolina, a bourgeois town where only four students have been assigned to integrate into previously all-white schools. Their parents are willing to face discrimination and violence to ensure a better education for their children. Baldwin asserts that segregated societies always perpetuate low levels of education. Children know that they are not being given a quality education, despite arguments of “separate but equal”: “They also know why they are going to an over-crowded, outmoded plant, in classes so large that even the most strictly attentive student, the most gifted teacher cannot but feel himself slowly drowning in the sea of general helplessness” (106).