Baldwin is not explicit about the time and place of the story. He does give us a few clues, however. For one thing, it clearly takes place in a Southern town. The story told about beating the grandson of Julia Blossom in jail suggests a small town in the South. His fear of bringing “the bastards from the north down on their backs” if he organized a search of black homes for guns also suggests that the setting is in the South. Of course, the horrible lynching he remembers from his childhood also suggests that the story takes place in the South.
The time of the story is also unclear, but it seems it could be during the civil rights movement, in the 1950s or 60s. The singing that Jesse hates so much is emblematic of the nonviolent protests of that time. Another clue is that the story begins with...
Unlock
This Answer NowStart your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
Jesse in bed, listening to cars travel down a road, headlights illuminating his room, and imagines it to be full of college students coming “from out of state” to attend a protest at the courthouse the next day.
I think Baldwin is purposely ambiguous about setting in the story. Even though his choice of making the white deputy the narrator is an attempt to look specifically at the causes of his racism, the lack of detail about the setting suggests Baldwin is trying to articulate general principles. This could be any deputy, in any town in the South.
James Baldwin's story "Going to Meet the Man" is set in a southern town in the US. It's important that the story takes place in the south, but even more important than the where is the when.
It's always good to know two things about the timing of a story. When does the story itself take place? And when was the story actually written or published? This helps us make more sense of what's going on in the plot, plus we can get the big picture about what was going on in the world when people were first reading the story.
In this case, the story was published in 1965 (that's when people could first read it) and it takes place in probably somewhere between 1886 and 1900, a chaotic time of extremely violent racism toward blacks. We see the main character, Jesse, as both a child and an adult in the story, which is how we know that the time span of the story must be fairly long rather than a single year.
Reflecting on why it would be relevant for Baldwin to write in 1965 about the violence and cruelty of the not-so-distant past, it becomes clear that the struggle for civil rights was reaching a critical period then; it was important for people to understand just how far we as a society have come (or have failed to come) in our progress toward equality.
When a story doesn't say what year(s) it takes place in exactly, try looking for historical clues:
We know from the story that the Jim Crow laws are already in place, for example, so it has to take place after 1870. Since Jesse's attitude toward blacks is that they're the source of his problems and don't deserve any bit of humane treatment they do get, it's probably after 1875, the year the first of the Civil Rights Acts was passed. And since mob violence and lynching take center stage in the story, we might make a good guess that the section of the story with the child Jesse takes place between 1886 and 1900, the height of lynchings and one of the darkest time periods in our nation's history.
References