James Baldwin was fascinated with eloquence itself, the soaring phrase, the rhythm pushed hard, the sharp and glorious ring of a sentence.
Rereading The Fire Next Time after the death of Michael Brown, and then again after that of George Floyd, changed the book for me—because those events had changed me. I want my students to have that same opportunity in their own time, not just mine.
A new book invites us to revisit the world and ideas of one of our great writers, who also served, during the 20th Century, as a one of our society's outstanding voices of conscience and tribunes for justice.
James Campbell worked in the civil rights movement with Jack O’Dell, Bayard Rustin, Malcolm X and Bob Moses; in the theater and contributed to the influential Freedomways journal co-founded by W.E.B. and Shirley Graham Du Bois. Now at 95, a tribute.
Five movies for the holidays: First Reformed | Movie. If Beale Street Could Talk. "Bisbee '17" | Documentary. Minding the Gap | Documentary. Amazing Grace | Documentary.
Barry Jenkins' screen adaptation of James Baldwin's novel of the same name, set in 1972. A young African-American woman struggles to clear her husband of false charges before the birth of their baby.
When she was 30, Suzy Hansen left the US for Istanbul – and began to realize that Americans will never understand their own country until they see it as the rest of the world does. In college, she read James Baldwin, giving the sense of meeting someone who knew her better, than she had herself. This came as a shock, not necessarily because he said I was sick. It was because he kept calling me that thing: “white American”.
In Esquire's July 1968 issue, published just after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., the magazine talked to James Baldwin about the state of race relations in the country. On what would be the author's 93rd birthday, we've republished the interview in full—and his words are incredibly relevant today.
Through a very clever and subtle weaving together of archival footages, interviews, stereotypic images from racist advertizing from the thirties and forties, and from contemporary TV, we are provided with a historical context and an incredible graphic depiction of the momentous civil rights movement that swept the American south in those years, the lunch-counter sit-ins, the courageous fight to integrate the educational system, the voter registration drives, ...
Reader Comments - Lots: James Baldwin: "I Am Not Your Negro"; Elizabeth Warren - Nevertheless, She Persisted; Know Your Rights guide from the ACLU; Readers debate role of Russia; Iowa's New Union Busting Law - what it means for the whole country; Lessons from the Japanese Internment for Today's Anti-Immigrant Hysteria; Exploiting Black Labor after the Abolition of Slavery; Resources; Announcements: and more...
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