Our History

The James Baldwin Outdoor Learning Center is named after the beloved and celebrated American writer (1924 – 1987) and DeWitt Clinton High School graduate ’42.

Baldwin once said, “It is the responsibility of free men to trust and to celebrate what is constant - birth, struggle, and death are constant, and so is love, though we may not always think so – and to apprehend the nature of change, to be able and willing to change.”

What better place to witness these constants than in garden spaces where they are always at play? The re-imagination of our beautiful and productive school grounds as public space is a project that we feel James Baldwin would have loved and celebrated - especially as we explore its capacity for functioning as a diverse and accessible cultural meeting place, and a nexus for social, environmental and food justice.