The Fire this time

Richard Pithouse, Mail & Guardian

In 1963 James Baldwin prefaced and ended The Fire Next Time, two essays on race in America, with a lyric from a song composed by Africans enslaved in America: ‘God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water but fire next time!’ In the Christian reading of Genesis God ‘set the rainbow in the cloud’ as a sign of a divine covenant that the elect, chosen to survive the flood that had cleansed the world of human evil, would never again have to confront the rising waters. But those who turned from the path of righteousness would, in a moment of final reckoning, perish in fire.

Malcom X Debate with James Badlwin - 5 September 1963

“A Talk to Teachers”

James Baldwin: “A Talk to Teachers” by TigersEye99

Malcolm X - Debate with James Baldwin - September 5, 1963

An Open Letter to My Sister, Miss Angela Davis

November 19, 1970

Dear Sister:

One might have hoped that, by this hour, the very sight of chains on black flesh, or the very sight of chains, would be so intolerable a sight for the American people, and so unbearable a memory, that they would themselves spontaneously rise up and strike off the manacles. But, no, they appear to glory in their chains; now, more than ever, they appear to measure their safety in chains and corpses. And so, Newsweek, civilized defender of the indefensible, attempts to drown you in a sea of crocodile tears (“it remained to be seen what sort of personal liberation she had achieved”) and puts you on its cover, chained.

You look exceedingly alone—as alone, say, as the Jewish housewife in the boxcar headed for Dachau, or as any one of our ancestors, chained together in the name of Jesus, headed for a Christian land.

James Baldwin on Malcom X

“Inventory on Being” – James Baldwin

A spoken word and jazz collaboration from “A Lovers Question” – David Linx

The Global Imagination of James Baldwin

Rich Blint interviewed by Sean Jacobs, Africa is a Country

In February this year a first-rate group of scholars gathered in New York City to debate the legacy of the twentieth century American writer and critic, James Baldwin (1924-1987). I missed the proceedings, titled “James Baldwin’s Global Imagination,” so I asked one of organizers, Rich Blint, about the conference’s aims, Baldwin’s ideas and politics of Baldwin as well as what he would have made of Barack Obama’s “post-racism.”

James Cone’s Gospel of the Penniless, Jobless, Marginalized and Despised

by Chris Hedges, TruthDig

“The Cross and the Lynching Tree are separated by nearly two thousand years,” James Cone writes in his new book, “The Cross and the Lynching Tree.” “One is the universal symbol of the Christian faith; the other is the quintessential symbol of black oppression in America. Though both are symbols of death, one represents a message of hope and salvation, while the other signifies the negation of that message by white supremacy. Despite the obvious similarities between Jesus’ death on the cross and the death of thousands of black men and women strung up to die on a lamppost or tree, relatively few people, apart from the black poets, novelists, and other reality-seeing artists, have explored the symbolic connections. Yet, I believe this is the challenge we must face. What is at stake is the credibility and the promise of the Christian gospel and the hope that we may heal the wounds of racial violence that continue to divide our churches and our society.”

James Baldwin interviewed by Kenneth Clark

James Baldwin on the Assassination of Malcolm X

James Baldwin on Education

James Baldwin on the human being as the measure

The Fire Next Time

It's shocking how little has changed between the races in this country since 1963, when James Baldwin published this coolly impassioned plea to "end the racial nightmare." The Fire Next Time--even the title is beautiful, resonant, and incendiary. "Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?" Baldwin demands, flicking aside the central race issue of his day and calling instead for full and shared acceptance of the fact that America is and always has been a multiracial society. Without this acceptance, he argues, the nation dooms itself to "sterility and decay" and to eventual destruction at the hands of the oppressed: "The Negroes of this country may never be able to rise to power, but they are very well placed indeed to precipitate chaos and ring down the curtain on the American dream."