Achille Tenkiang ’17 Founds Baldwin Institute to Foster Creative Resistance

Achille Tenkiang ’17 was in 8^th grade when his teacher Kenneth Hollis took him aside and suggested that he read the literature of James Baldwin, the influential Black writer and civil rights activist whose works loom large in the history of American letters. At Gunning Bedford Middle School in New Castle, Delaware, a small town outside Wilmington, Tenkiang says, Hollis was the only Black teacher he had until he attended Princeton.

“Go Tell It on the Mountain was the first James Baldwin book I read,” Tenkiang says, and Hollis’ recommendation led him to the works of other significant Black writers, such as Paul Laurence Dunbar and Lorraine Hansberry. For him, reading Baldwin “created that ripple effect.”

The child of immigrants from Cameroon, Tenkiang continued exploring Baldwin at Princeton in a seminar taught by Professor Eddie Glaude Jr. *97, whose book Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own was published in 2020. “We went through all of Baldwin’s work, actually,” Tenkiang says, “and I just kept reading.”

After graduation, Tenkiang’s peripatetic career took him from Nairobi, Kenya, as a Labouisse ’26 Fellow working with a local youth empowerment organization, to Paris as a legal assistant (simultaneously portraying Martin Luther King Jr. in a production of Katori Hall’s 2009 play, The Mountaintop). But Baldwin never left Tenkiang’s mind, and in Paris he started a book club for Black men interested in Black feminist literature. In response, one of his Princeton friends joked he should start a “Baldwin baby bootcamp,” and the idea stuck. “I sat with the idea,” Tenkiang says, “and refined it.”

In 2024, Tenkiang founded the Baldwin Institute to coincide with the centennial of James Baldwin’s birth. Inspired by how his early exposure to Baldwin’s writings opened the door to his own personal and intellectual growth, Tenkiang envisioned the nonprofit organization as a way to give the same experience to today’s youth.

It runs programs such as Baldwin’s Gateway, a supplemental curriculum piloted with the Uncommon Schools charter network in New York. Designed for small groups of six to 15 students interested in studying Baldwin and his contemporaries, the program aims to contextualize these works of literature for the next generation in an intimate setting. “I want these kids to feel held and safe as they’re embarking on this journey,” Tenkiang says. “Baldwin is going to give [them] language [they’ve] never heard before.”

The Baldwin Institute also seeks to promote youth literacy in a variety of ways, Tenkiang says. With a workshop series called “Creative Futures,” it has organized theater, photography, poetry, and art classes for underrepresented youth in New York City, Philadelphia, and Austin, Texas. “The idea is that we’re not only putting cameras and paint brushes in these students’ hands,” Tenkiang says. “We’re giving them the tools … to understand how their work is situated in a broader lineage of creative resistance.”

The institute has also notched some high-profile partnerships and endorsements. In December 2024, Tenkiang addressed the U.S. Embassy in France during the Baldwin Centennial Festival. In February, the organization ran an essay contest in partnership with the Brooklyn Nets that attracted 500 entrants. “The cool thing is that the winning student got courtside seats to see the Nets play,” Tenkiang says. “All the coaches and players read his essay.”

Tenkiang has also partnered up with the Princeton alumni network. This summer, the Baldwin Institute has a Princeton student intern sponsored by the Princeton Internships in Civic Service program. For the next year, the Baldwin Institute will also have two year-long Princeton alumni fellows through the Princeton AlumniCorps Project 55 Fellowship Program.

As the Trump administration continues its attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and “woke” literature, Tenkiang sees the institute’s vision as more important than ever. “We can’t tell the kids there’s no hope,” Tenkiang says, paraphrasing Baldwin’s own words. “There’s a Baldwin quote for everything.”