How the legendary debate between a civil rights firebrand and the father of modern conservatism illuminates America's racial divide
On February 18, 1965, an overflowing crowd packed the Cambridge Union in Cambridge, England, to witness a historic televised debate between James Baldwin, the leading literary voice of the civil rights movement, and William F. Buckley Jr., a fierce critic of the movement and America's most influential conservative intellectual. The topic was the American dream is at the expense of the American Negro, and no one who has seen the debate can soon forget it. Nicholas Buccola's The Fire Is upon Us is the first book to tell the full story of the event, the radically different paths that led Baldwin and Buckley to it, and how the debate and the decades-long clash between the men illuminates the racial divide that continues to haunt America today.
Nicholas Buccola is the author of The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Salon, and many other publications. He is the Elizabeth and Morris Glicksman Chair in Political Science at Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon. Twitter @buccola_nick
Title: The Fire Is upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate Over Race in America
Author: Buccola, Nicholas
ISBN: 9780691210773
Binding:
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication Date: 2020-09-22
Number of Pages: 504
Weight: 0.4801 kg
Winner of the Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction, Oregon Book Awards
Shortlisted for the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, Phi Beta Kappa Society
Shortlisted for the MAAH Stone Book Award, Museum of African American History
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