First published in 1963, James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time stabbed at the heart of America's so-called "Negro problem." As remarkable for its masterful prose as for its frank and personal account of the black experience in the United States, it is considered one of the most passionate and influential explorations of 1960s race relations, weaving thematic threads of love, faith, and family into a candid assault on the hypocrisy of the "land of the free.