The Fire Next Time

In James Baldwin’s book, “The Fire Next Time”, he talks about police brutality when the Nation of Islam’s demand for a separate black economy in America was happening. Baldwin talked about how he payed little to no attention to this demand until he started to notice the behavior of the police. Baldwin states, “After all, I had seen men dragged from their platforms on this very corner for saying less virulent things, and I had seen many crowds dispersed by policemen, with clubs or on horseback. But the policemen were doing nothing now. Obviously, this was not because they had become more human but because they were under orders and because they were afraid.(page 48)”. I thought this was interesting because during the freedom rides, police officers did not stop at any cost, whereas these officers weren’t doing anything.  We have discussed police brutality multiple times in class, in different time periods, but I didn’t understand why all the sudden this demand struck fear into these officers. Baldwin also talks a lot about his love and hatred for the church and what the Bible tells individuals to be and how to act. Baldwin began this essay by saying how the church turned out to be his “gimmick” (page 24) and how it lifted him out of his preestablished life that was built by society. Later in the book he discusses how much he struggled with some of the ideas and main purposes of the Bible. Baldwin says, “When I watched all the children, their copper, brown, and beige faces staring up at me as I taught Sunday school, I felt that I was committing a crime in talking about the gentle Jesus, in telling them to reconcile themselves to their misery on earth in order to gain the crown of eternal life.” (page 39). On the same page he stated, “I really mean that there was no love in the church. It was a mask for hatred and self-hatred and despair.”. While I was reading this, I was confused on how someone could use the church as their way out of their controlled life path but also feel so negatively about what the church conveyed and represented.

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