The Fire Is upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America

In February 1965, James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, Jr. – two leading American public intellectuals – met at Cambridge University to debate this topic: "The American dream is at the expense of the American Negro." The result was one of the most intellectually explosive moments of the Civil Rights Era. In this lecture based on his book ​The Fire Is upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America​, Dr. Nicholas Buccola (professor and the Elizabeth & Morris Glicksman Chair in political science at Linfield College) provides the history of that night, not just as a play-by-play of the event, but as an intellectual biography of these two writers' evolving thoughts on race and its shameful history since America's birth. With more than half a century of hindsight, we see the radicalism and wary hope of the Civil Rights movement, the fear of black equality by white conservatives, and perhaps most importantly, how five decades later these fights are still very much alive.