Ninety-nine years ago today, James Baldwin took his first breath—though his impact continued to breathe a life of its own today.

Born on Aug. 2, 1924, in Harlem, N.Y., Baldwin grew to become best known for his writing, speeches and plays that center on Blackness and queerness in 1960s America. His work included: The Fire Next Time, Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, Notes of a Native Son, If Beale Street Could Talk, Another Country and many more.

He was friends with other major public figures of the civil rights movement like activists Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, writer Maya Angelou, singer Nina Simone, and playwright Lorraine Hansberry. Some of his work was even directly inspired by the deaths of these friends, who were canons of American history themselves.

What catapulted his reputation to remain relevant in today’s political and literary discussions of Blackness and queerness is the stark reality that these issues still linger today as they did 60 years ago. Anti-Black violence oftentimes occurs in the hands of the police force, and LGBTQ issues are seeing an increase legislative target on its trans counterparts.

Paralleling issues aside, Baldwin’s legacy paved the way for many Black queer leaders to come. Earl Fowlkes Jr. was honored with the James Baldwin Legacy Award last year by the The National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC) for his work as the President and CEO of the Center for Black Equity coalition. Upon reflecting the victory, he shares with Reckon that “James Baldwin was the original Black Gay Renaissance Man. I was inspired and intrigued by his writings as a teen and admired him for his brilliance as a writer and an orator as an adult.”

Baldwin’s work has ushered a lineage of Black queer writers, scholars and playwrights. Recipient of the Lambda Literary Award and Whiting Award author and musician Brontez Purnell tells Reckon that “sometimes when I write there is the inherent vibe check of ‘AM I MAKING JAMES BALDWIN PROUD OF ME?’”

“I can’t say that I’m a “perfect” son of Baldwin—I curse too much and have little investment in long form political debate,” Purnell explained. “That said, the beauty of Baldwin was his command, it was like he was DARING you to see [things] his way. I can only hope I match that in [some] ways.”

Hari Ziyad, author of memoir Black Boy Out of Time and play I’m Worried About You. The bestselling author and screenwriter takes great pride in their reality of having built a career around literary discussions of race, gender and sexuality. They credit Baldwin for that.

“His unwavering confrontations of complex issues still ignites the imagination and expands possibilities,” they told Reckon. “Open almost any Baldwin book, and you’ll find its relevance undiminished, a testament to both his prescience and the stagnation of this society that was so often the object of his critique.”

What makes Baldwin’s work remarkable is not just that he captured the political landscape of his time, but that the proof of his work has allowed writers, thinkers and scholars of today to work with his insights for the possibility of a more just future.

“His timeless words have left an indelible mark on not just the literary landscape, but Black and queer communities as a whole,” Ziyad said. “The brilliance with which James Baldwin articulated our experience continues to serve as a guiding light, inspiring others to embrace their voices and challenge the status quo.”

In honor of his birthday today, here are five Baldwin speeches that achingly continue to echo today’s fight for racial and LGBTQ justice.

In 1963, Baldwin appeared on Boston public television producer Henry Morgenthau III’s “The Negro and the American Promise” in an interview with Kenneth Clark. He shared his thoughts on whether he is optimistic about the future of America:

“I can’t be a pessimist because I’m alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter, so I’m forced to be an optimist. I’m forced to believe that we can survive whatever we must survive. But the future of the Negro in this country is precisely as bright or as dark as the future of the country. It is entirely up to the American people and our representatives — it is entirely up to the American people whether or not they are going to face, and deal with, and embrace this stranger whom they maligned so long.”

In a debate against William F. Buckley at Cambridge University in 1965, Baldwin delivered a heart-wrenching speech on his relationship with the American Dream:

“Had the American Negro had not been present in America, I am convinced the history of the American labor movement would be much more edifying than it is. It is a terrible thing for an entire people to surrender to the notion that one-ninth of its population is beneath them. And until that moment, until the moment comes when we the American people are able to accept the fact that on that continent, we are trying to forge a new identity for which we need each other and that I am not a ward of America.”

In 1968, the same year Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, inner-city turmoil over racial tension was already occurring, not to mention that the U.S. was in the thick of war with Vietnam. Baldwin shared his stance on the riots:

“I’m a man like you. I want to live like you. This country is mine; I paid as much for it as you. White means that you are Europeans still and Black means I’m African, but we both know we both been here too long. You can’t go back to Ireland or Poland or England and I can’t go back to Africa. And we will live here together, or we’ll die here together. And it’s not ‘I am Telling You’; time is telling you. You will listen or you will perish.”

In 1971, Baldwin was interviewed by Nikki Giovanni in a special two-part presentation of Soul! filmed in London:

“White people don’t know what they come out of; there’s no metaphor in their experience for it. Or the metaphor in their own experience is so deeply buried and so frightening. Because, you see, the reason people think it’s important to be white is that they think it’s important not to be Black. They think it’s important to be white because white means you are civilized, and being Black means you are not civilized. And there’s yet to be apprehended in any way whatever that in fact I would not be able to walk the streets or even look at you or you at me, or do whatever we do in our terrible days, day to day, if we were not civilized.”

When this was originally taped in 1979, ABC had buried the segment. It took four decades until it was resurfaced:

“Some things happened to me because I was human, and some things happened because I was Black. Nobody wants a Black writer until he’s dead. I have nothing against you personally. I don’t even know you personally. But I know you, historically.”