The Fire Next Time in the civil sphere: Literary journalism and justice in America 1963

Abstract

As a form of communication that can inspire solidarity through appeals to democratic ideals, literary journalism can play a constitutive role in social and political struggles for justice and freedom in democratic societies. In 1963, at a pivotal moment in the US Civil Rights Movement, James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time helped many Americans, including those in the highest offices of the federal government, understand the moral good of the goals of the African American freedom struggle and the democratic imperative to enact and protect the civil rights of all Americans. In this way, Baldwin’s work, along with other key historical forces, helped to expand the civil sphere and build a more just and democratic society in the United States. Civil sphere theory helps explain the role of such communication in social struggles for democracy.

Regional media framing of the Confederate flag debate in South Carolina

“…Less than a month after the Charleston massacre, the South Carolina General Assembly voted to remove the Confederate flag from the Statehouse grounds in Columbia. The framing of a tragic event in wide news media coverage can move public debate in ways that political argumentation cannot, and that has been notably true of entrenched opposition to civil rights (Alexander, 2006; Forde, 2014; Friedman & Richardson, 2008; Roberts & Klibanoff, 2008). Indeed, the Charleston tragedy moved public opinion among white respondents from wide support for the flag display (77%) to majority opposition (57%) (Huffmon, Knotts, & McKee, 2017).…”

Communication and the Civil Sphere

“…Baldwin’s work tapped into Nussbaum’s “sentiments of sympathy and love” and helped expand the “circle of we” in civil society, even if that expansion was partial and contingent. Cultural expression, of which Baldwin’s statement was a part, was a formidable force, I argue, in kindling sentiments of fellow feeling and moral recognition in ordinary Americans and even (and importantly) key actors in the Kennedy administration, including Attorney General Robert Kennedy (Forde, 2014). While I don’t claim this cultural expression was the primary force, it was nonetheless an important force in pushing the Kennedy administration to introduce civil rights legislation that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.…”

“…It was a pivotal year in the U.S. civil rights movement. Martin Luther King, Jr. emerged as the movement's most visible and influential leader, and Baldwin emerged as its literary voice (Joseph, 2006), participating in protest events, appearing on the cover of Time magazine, and even arranging what would become a famous and consequential meeting with Attorney General Robert Kennedy (Forde, 2014). Yet Arendt's letter to Baldwin was more about disapproval than admiration.…”

“…Elsewhere I have argued that civil sphere theory helps us understand the role The Fire Next Time and Baldwin himself played in the expansive symbolic contest of communication during the U.S. civil rights movement (Forde, 2014). Baldwin’s work tapped into Nussbaum’s “sentiments of sympathy and love” and helped expand the “circle of we” in civil society, even if that expansion was partial and contingent.…”

“…In his New Yorker (1962a) and Progressive (1962b) essays, later published collectively as The Fire Next Time , he self-consciously spoke directly to White Americans. His goal was to make them understand “that whiteness was as much a social category as blackness and that the nation itself had been successively built on a concept and articulation of whiteness that relied on the subjugation of the Black Americans” (Forde, 2014, p. 578). “Color is not a human or a personal reality,” Baldwin wrote, “It is a political reality”(1963/1993, p. 118).…”