James Baldwin as seen against the backdrop of racial upheaval
The late writer and activist James Baldwin was an angry man. Furious about racism in the nation and the homophobia of his time, he was also deeply disappointed by the Civil Rights Movement and what he viewed as its lost opportunity to force white America to confront the lies it embraced to maintain its sense of supremacy. But later in his life his thinking evolved, Eddie S. Glaude Jr. argues in his new book, “Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own.” And Baldwin saw some hope for change. An online conversation hosted by the nonprofit publisher Haymarket Books on Wednesday brought together Glaude, the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American Studies at Princeton, and Cornel R. West, professor of the practice of public philosophy at the Harvard Divinity School, in a lively exchange about the roots and the contemporary relevance of the works produced...