synopsis:

non-fiction book, compromising two previously published essays in letter form by James Baldwin. Together they constitute a powerful warning that violence would result if white America did not change its attitude and policies toward black Americans and alter the conditions under which they were forced to live.

The first, 'My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of Emancipation', attacks the idea that blacks are inferior to whites and emphasizes the intrinsic dignity of black people. Baldwin advises his nephew on how to deal with the racist world in which he was born. In spite the horrors of America, Baldwin believed the Negro must take the high road and show whites, in their ignorance and innocence, how to live the good life, how to love.

The second, 'Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind', recounts Baldwin's coming-of-age in Harlem, appraises the Black Muslim movement, and states his personal beliefs. This long essay has a bipartite structure. In the first part Baldwin recounted his religious experience as a fourteen year old boy, about the age of his nephew, and his view of Christianity as an adult. He sketches out his disappointments with the Negro's religion, which he views primarily as escapist. He then turned to his second mission, which comprised the greater part of the essay, to trash the Muslim movement among African Americans. Here he attempted to come to the grips with the phenomena of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad, and Malcolm X. Elijah's brand of Islam viewed Christianity as the white man's wicked rationale for oppressing blacks and that all white people were accursed devils whose sway was destined to end. God is black and his proper address is "Allah" and he has chosen black people of America to end the devil's domination by means of the theology of Islam. In this long letter, Baldwin also described his audience with Elijah Muhammad, who Baldwin believed was lucid, passionate, and cunning. For Baldwin the problem was that Elijah preached a dogma of racial hatred that was no better than the reverse of whites' hatred for blacks. Baldwin rejected Elijah and Malcolm.

Baldwin believed he had a greater vision than Malcolm and Elijah. He believed that the Negro's suffering was redemptive and that's the Negro's example had curative powers for the nation. At this stage of his development, Baldwin believed the Negro's redeeming love of whites, in their innocence and ignorance, would make the difference. American blacks' complex fate, Baldwin reiterated his well-tuned song, was the rescue, the delivery of white Americans from their imprisonment in myths of racial superi

on this book:

'The Fire Next Time', sometimes referred to as baldwin's 'eloquent manifesto', which he hoped would avert racial conflagration, appeared first in The New Yorker (1962), as 'Letter from a Region in my Mind'. Though Baldwin received some heat for his choice of publication, his massive essay caused an immediate sensation and was quickly published in book form. Some believe Baldwin's book spurred and help to "galvanize" the civil rights movement which resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.