100 Years of James Baldwin
James Baldwin (1924–1987) was a novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic, and one of the most brilliant and provocative literary figures of the postwar era. His nonfiction collections and novels explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in mid-20th-century America.
First published in 1963, James Baldwin’s ‘The Fire Next Time’ stabbed at the heart of America’s so-called “Negro problem.” As remarkable for its masterful prose as for its frank and personal account of the black experience in the United States, it is considered one of the most passionate and influential explorations of 1960s race relations, weaving thematic threads of love, faith, and family into a candid assault on the hypocrisy of the “land of the free.”
Photos © Steve Schapiro:
James Baldwin in Harlem
Trainees sing “We Shall Overcome” in Oxford, Ohio, before boarding a bus in June 1964.
Steve Schapiro at work in 1966.
Along the march for voting rights, Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, 1965.