First published in 1963, James Baldwin's
A Fire Next Time stabbed at the heart of America's so called 'Negro problem”. As
remarkable for its masterful prose as it is for its uncompromising account of black
experience in the United States, it is considered to this day one of the most articulate and
influential expressions of 1960s race relations.
The book consists of two essays, 'My Dungeon Shook Letter to my Nephew on the
One Hundredth Anniversary of Emancipation,” and 'Down At The Cross Letter from
a Region of My Mind.” It weaves thematic threads of love, faith, and family into a candid
assault on the hypocrisy of the so say 'land of the free”, insisting on the inequality implicit
to American society. 'You were born where you were born and faced the future that you
faced”, Baldwin writes to his nephew, 'because you were black and for no other reason.”
His profound sense of injustice is matched by a robust belief in 'monumental dignity”, in
patience, empathy, and the po
