The Fire Next Time

When Baldwin is invited to meet Elijah Muhammed, he finds the authoritarian structure, including the subjugation of both women and men to Muhammed’s authority, disturbing. Certainly, Baldwin does not agree with any power structure within which others are oppressed; even if they seem to acquiesce to their own subjection. Additionally, White people and their many crimes, not the concerns or needs of Black people, are the sole topic of discussion. Similarly, Baldwin decries the demonizing of White people as “white devils.” For Baldwin, such demonization seems not only impractical, but dangerous, in the sense that it blinds Muhammed’s followers to the real dangers and complex operation of African Americans’ systematic socioeconomic and political oppression.

Fire appears throughout the essays as a powerful embodiment of the dangers inherent in the oppression of African Americans within American society. Baldwin himself exemplifies the overarching theme of the work with the title of his book and its epigraph: “God gave Noah the rainbow sign / No more water but fire next time,” from the spiritual “Mary Don’t You Weep” (F.W. Dupee, “James Baldwin and the ‘Man,’” New York Review of Books, 1 June 1963). He also compares America to a burning house.