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45 pages 1 hour read

James Baldwin

The Fire Next Time

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1963

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Essay 2: "Down at the Cross"Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Essay 2 Summary & Analysis: “Down at the Cross”

This essay is far longer and contains a more complex revelation of Baldwin’s thoughts and feelings on racial discrimination. Like a sermon, this essay contains three rhetorical parts: a statement of the problem at hand, using Baldwin’s stories from growing up in Harlem to provide examples that stand in for verses of scripture; an elaboration on the problem or a discussion of a possible solution, in the form of radical Islam; and a resolution, or a prescription for the congregations’ behavior, regarding the problem presented at the opening of the sermon.

Baldwin describes his early life, in which there were only two options for a young Black man in Harlem: the church or street life. The street life offered prostitution, drinking and drug addiction, gambling, and plenty of desperation and despair. The church, for a time, seemed to offer a much brighter opportunity. He experienced a religious conversion, at a church to which his father did not belong and where his father also did not preach.

As a 14-year-old preacher, Baldwin learned how to perform for an audience. He was rewarded at home, where his difficult relationship with his overbearing father became easier, and he was rewarded amongst his community as a holy, youthful, and moral example. However, he came to see these performances as inauthentic and lacking in the very substance that he craved: truth. He understood that Christianity was essentially a construct of a “White God” pushed upon the African American community to keep them humble and submissive; even to justify their subjugation, as the children of Ham, who were doomed to be slaves (36).

Further, he refers to the church as a “racket”—equating it with street life (29), and he refers to his sermons as performances, “being in the pulpit was like being in the theatre; I was behind the scenes and knew how the illusion was worked” (37). He finds that “[t]here was no love in the church. It was a mask for hatred and self-hatred and despair” (39). Therefore, it is not long before Baldwin gives up on the church and all the falsity and hypocrisy it symbolizes to him. For example, “When we were told to love everybody, I thought that meant everybody. But no. It applied only to those who believed as we did, and it did not apply to white people at all” (40). For three years he preached, as he slowly became convinced that the church, specifically Christianity, was responsible for African American subjugation and oppression, offering only the possibility of future justice at the hand of a White God.

In addition, Baldwin’s title creates a clear reference to Christianity. The symbolism of Christianity also encompasses a sense of the cross as a crossroads: What direction will America go?

In the second section, Baldwin is invited to visit the famous Muslim leader—Elijah Muhammad—of the Nation of Islam movement. Though Baldwin disdains many of their stated aims, such as a completely separate Black economy, as naïve or even dangerous, his curiosity and the changed behavior of the police, who are too afraid to beat or arrest the Nation of Islam speakers from their perches on Harlem’s corners, cause him to respond to Muhammad’s summons. What the Nation of Islam offers its listeners is power, which Baldwin agrees is the one thing that Black people do not have that they need, and what Muhammad says the people of Harlem are ready to hear: All White people are devils, and they are about to be brought down by Allah, bringing about an entirely Black authority and socioeconomic structure (49).

The Christian symbolism of “Down at the Cross” takes on a competing religion, Islam, wherein Baldwin finds little difference from the hypocrisy of Christianity, wherein the Nation of Islam has embraced a so-called “Black” God—Allah, who they claim is the true God of all Black people. Muhammad and his followers, including Malcolm X, insist that the White God of Christianity and its White followers must be thrown aside, no matter the cost.

Baldwin also reports on the missed opportunities, particularly after WWII, for America to offer its Black citizens true and earned equality. At that point, many Black Americans lost respect for the nation and its institutions, as well as for White people in general. Such disappointments demonstrate the sense among African Americans that their sacrifices will never pay off in terms of equality or social justice, making them easy marks for Muhammad’s claims. As Baldwin says, “The white God has not delivered them, perhaps the Black God will” (57).

In Baldwin’s meeting with Elijah Muhammad, he finds that the authoritarian Christian family structure in which he grew up has been recreated in a Muslim familial structure, with Muhammad as the authoritative head, and all other men and women within the group willing subjects to his authority. Having experienced this form of authority his entire life, Baldwin does not find much difference between the Christian charade and the Muslim one, particularly when he discovers that all White people are condemned to Hell as devils in the Nation of Islam. To Baldwin, this belief is impossible to accept, particularly as his vision of integration includes, by design and necessity, White people’s participation. In addition, he finds the Nation of Islam’s hatred of White people to be no better than White Christians’ hatred of African Americans. He rejects the Nation of Islam and its doctrines.

The third section of Baldwin’s sermon consists of the reckoning and explication of his vision for bringing about social justice for African Americans. Baldwin calls for an end to racial hatred and hate speech, which when turned upon any ethnic group can only become a “recipe for murder,” as exemplified in history by the Nazi’s and currently by the Nation of Islam (82). Instead, Baldwin solicits both Black and White people to begin with compassionate, mutual understanding that will eventually and inevitably bring about social justice and equality. He asks for radical transformation of America through love and understanding. Using examples, such as Bobby Kennedy’s speeches on the topic of racial justice, Baldwin bolsters his claims that there are White people who are ready and willing to assist in enacting social change.

Baldwin’s passionate exhortations for racial understanding, tolerance, and compassion complete his prescription for the resolution of the image of America as a burning house. White people and African Americans must simply work together to complete the promise of the ideals of freedom and justice embodied within the belief system and values of the country. However, the price of the freedom for both lies in achieving freedom for both races; therefore, both sides must be open to change, beginning with White people acknowledging the brutal, systemic oppression of African Americans.

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