How If Beale Street Could Talk Author James Baldwin Went From Literary Critic to Civil-Rights Icon

History changed around James Baldwin, but the glaring contradiction in American life that he so often highlighted still lurks within it. The author's work argued that white Americans who boast of the United States as a nation of freedom can only do so by glossing over, to some degree, its history of slavery, as well as myriad other injustices experienced by minority groups of all kinds.

History changed around James Baldwin, but the glaring contradiction in American life that he so often highlighted still lurks within it. The author's work argued that white Americans who boast of the United States as a nation of freedom can only do so by glossing over, to some degree, its history of slavery, as well as myriad other injustices experienced by minority groups of all kinds.