All the grief, grit, and unassailable dignity of the civil rights movement are evoked in this centennial edition of James Baldwins The Fire Next Time, with photographs by Steve Schapiro. Together, Baldwins frank account of the black experience and Schapiros vital images offer testimony to one of the most important struggles of American society.

First published in 1963, James BaldwinsThe Fire Next Timestabbed at the heart of Americas 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.

Now, James Baldwins rich, raw, and ever relevant prose is reprinted withmore than 100 photographs from Steve Schapiro, who traveled the American South with Baldwin forLifemagazine. The encounter thrust Schapiro into the thick of the movement, allowing for vital, often iconic, images both of civil rights leadersincludingDr. Martin Luther King Jr.,Rosa Parks,Fred Shuttlesworth, andJerome Smithand such landmark events as theMarch on Washingtonand theSelma march.

Rounding out the edition are Schapiros stories from the field, an original introduction by civil rights legend and U.S. CongressmanJohn Lewis, captions by journalistMarcia Davis, and an essay byGloria Baldwin Karefa-Smart, who was with her brother James in Sierra Leone when he started to work on the story. The result is a remarkable visual and textual record ofone of the most important and enduring struggles of the American experience.