Event Description
James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America
Hear from guest speaker Nicholas Buccola, whose book The Fire Is upon Us is the first book to tell the full story of the historic televised debate between James Baldwin, the leading literary voice of the civil rights movement, and William F. Buckley Jr., a fierce critic of the movement and America's most influential conservative intellectual. The Fire Is upon Us covers the radically different paths that led Baldwin and Buckley to it, the controversies that followed, and how the debate and the decades-long clash between the men continues to illuminate America's racial divide today.
Buccola is the Elizabeth and Morris Glicksman Chair in Political Science at Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon.
