Few authors have shaped political and cultural discourse as elegantly or unflinchingly as James Baldwin. Against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, he emerged in the ’60s as a searing critic of the conditions of black people in the United States. Jim Crow laws in the South dictated terms of segregation; the epidemics of lynching and state-sanctioned violence terrorized black communities throughout the region. And as black families migrated to northern cities in hopes of reaching equity and justice, they were met with a host of de fac- to policies that limited access to secure housing, jobs and full livelihoods.

“The American soil is full of corpses of my ancestors, through 400 years and at least three wars,” Baldwin asserted during a 1965 debate against William F. Buckley ...