The Fire Next Time Summary

The book that I have chosen to do my reading response over is The Fire Next Time written by James Baldwin. This book is split up into two parts or letters. The first part is titled “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation.” The first part, written in a letter format to Baldwin 's fourteen year old nephew, talks over the crucial role of race in America’s history. The second portion of the book is titled “Down At The Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind.” This part of the book looks at the connections between race and religion. Mostly on Baldwin 's connections with the Christian church as a youth, and the Islamic concepts of others there in Harlem. How did James Baldwin get to write this book on the racial issues facing America? This book was first published in the year 1963. 1963 was a monumental year in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. In this year the Civil Rights Movement saw many

Baldwin was at the center of the civil rights movement. In 1963 Baldwin assembled a group of Black leaders to meet with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to discuss race relations. Baldwin came to write this book because he wanted to and was able to give a firsthand account of what it was like to be a “Negro” growing up and then living in a “white” America of the 1960s. This book was James Baldwin’s plea to "end the racial nightmare" (p. 156). It is shocking to read this and to realize how little has changed between 1963 and now. There are still racial issues that disrupt American society today. It has become more apparent in the last year as the movement “Black Lives Matter” has become a key focus in most of the media outlets. It is hard to turn on the news or read through an article on CNN without reading something new that has been happening in the “Black Lives Matter” campaign. Today it is not about the segregation of blacks and whites, but the fair and just treatment of African-American citizens in the United