“Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shining and all the stars aflame. You would be frightened because it is out of the order of nature. Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one's sense of one's own reality. Well, the black man has functioned in the white man's world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar: and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundation.”

American writer and civil rights activist

James Arthur Baldwin was an American writer and civil rights activist. He became known for his essays, novels, plays, and poems, and for his forceful public voice during the civil rights movement in the United States. His novel Go Tell It on the Mountain was published in 1953, and Notes of a Native Son, the 1955 essay collection, helped establish his reputation as a writer committed to human equality. He also took part in a 1965 debate with William F. Buckley that is regarded as highly influential.