Typescript draft with holograph emendations, “Down at the Cross: A Letter from a Region of My Mind”

The second essay in The Fire Next Time first appeared in The New Yorker, making Baldwin the second Black writer published in the magazine. “Down at the Cross” begins with an exploration of Baldwin’s early religious life and the racial injustices he endured around that time. The sentence beginning at line nine of this typescript page reads: “I was thirteen, and crossing Fifth Avenue, on my way to the Forty-second street library, and the cop in the middle of [the] avenue muttered, as I passed him, ‘Why don’t you … stay uptown where you belong?’” Baldwin then moves on to consider the Black Muslim movement before passionately calling on conscious people, white and Black, to work together “to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country.”