‘Ignorance, Allied with Power, Is the Most Ferocious Enemy Justice Can Have’
BALDWIN, James. No Name in the Street. London: Michael Joseph. 1972.
8vo. Publisher’s light blue cloth, black spine label lettered and framed in silver, in the black dust-jacket lettered in blue and light green, priced £2.00 net to front flap; pp. 168; a little general shelf wear, light spotting to top edge of textblock; else a sharp, near-fine copy.
A bright first UK edition, first impression of this personal reckoning with post-Civil Rights America.
Part memoir and part political testament, No Name in the Street is Baldwin’s deeply personal reckoning with the upheavals of 1960s America. Written in the shadow of the as-sassinations of Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers, it draws together re-flections on race, exile, identity, and the unfinished struggle for justice. By turns elegiac, angry, and incisive, the work ranks among Baldwin’s most searching assessments of the moral and political condition of the United States.
‘If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in this country, one does not ques-tion the policemen, the Judges, or or the protected members of the middle class [...] Ask any Mexican, any Puerto Rican, any black man, any poor person – ask the wretched how they fare in the halls of justice, and then you will know, not whether or not the country is just, but whether or not it has any love for justice, or any concept of it. It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have’. (p. 130).
SKU: 2124564