How James Baldwin Inspired This Black Gay Refugee’s Fight for Justice

by Nadira Jamerson, Word in Black

By the time Edafe Okporo arrived in Harlem in 2016, James Baldwin had been gone nearly three decades. Growing up in Warri, Nigeria, Okporo had read the Harlem Renaissance writer’s work long before he’d walk Baldwin’s streets.

“No matter where you go to, home is always where you feel safe and welcome — and home for Baldwin is always Harlem,” Okporo says. “I’ve been fleeing persecution my entire life, and I’ve been looking for a sense of home. When I came to Harlem, that was the first time I did feel at home.” 

Indeed, almost a decade later, Okporo, who owns one of the 50 original gold-plated copies of Baldwin’s award-winning novel “Go Tell it On the Mountain,” says love — and the spirit of Baldwin — are fuel for his activism as a Black and gay refugee.

In 2020, he opened a shelter for asylum seekers — the first of its kind in New York City. Baldwin, he says, taught him not to be afraid to speak up about of the dangers of protest suppression, the ongoing conflict in Gaza that has left tens of thousands dead and an estimated 100,000 Palestinian women and children facing severe malnutrition, and the need for expanding access to PrEP to prevent HIV in marginalized communities — even when doing so isn’t popular. 

And now he’s running for New York City Council in District 7.  

“When I do this work of carrying the weight of my community in my heart, I feel like it’s a work that has to do with love rather than for the accolades of it,” Okporo says. “It is that love that is long-suffering, that is persistent, that comes at great cost, that leads us to change.” 

Word In Black tells Okporo’s story.

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